


Drowning Men (Just Need a Rope)

by ifallonblackdays_fics



Category: Captain America (Movies), Political Animals
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Steve Rogers Has PTSD, TJ Hammond Has Issues, the Avengers love TJ - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-20
Updated: 2019-04-14
Packaged: 2019-08-05 01:29:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 34,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16358042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifallonblackdays_fics/pseuds/ifallonblackdays_fics
Summary: Steve Rogers and T.J. Hammond have been together for over a year. The world sees it as Captain America being in love with the drug addict son of an ex-President (never mind that T.J. has been clean for 13 months and counting). The way the two of them see it, Steve Rogers is in love with T.J. Hammond, and it's as simple as that.But nothing is ever simple, and as Steve struggles to come to terms with his PTSD and T.J. is determined to see him through, Elaine Barrish begins her presidential campaign, bringing T.J.'s demons back to the surface. And all hell breaks loose.[I am horrible at summaries, but please give this story a chance anyway.]





	1. Drowning

**Author's Note:**

> 1) I finally watched Political Animals and, to the surprise of absolutely no one, fell in love with T.J. Hammond. Once I finished the last episode, this idea for a story came to me and wouldn't leave me alone. T.J. deserved so much better. 
> 
> 2) You should know, Bucky is not in this story. This isn't a reincarnation story, nor one where T.J. and Bucky are lookalikes. In this universe, Bucky Barnes simply never existed. I adore Bucky beyond words, but I wanted to write a story for Steve and T.J., where two men each struggling with their own demons recognized and saw each other.
> 
> 3) The infinitely talented and infinitely lovely [secretlytodream](https://archiveofourown.org/users/secretlytodream/pseuds/secretlytodream%22) has created a video trailer for this story. It's amazing! I could not be more grateful. If you'd like to get an idea of what kind of ride you're in for, or if you'd just like to cry over Steve and TJ with us, you can find the video [HERE](http://secretlytodream.tumblr.com/post/184185255978/this-a-fic-trailer-for-a-steve-rogerstj-hammond). <3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can listen to the piece Steve remembers TJ playing [here](https://youtu.be/dP9KWQ8hAYk).

_All rivers, even the most dazzling,_

_those that catch the sun in their course,_

_all rivers go down to the ocean and drown._

_And life awaits man_

_as the sea awaits the river._

— Simone Schwarz-Bart

 

TJ is in the kitchen when Steve gets in early that morning. There’s piano music playing in the background. It sneaks right underneath Steve’s skin and stays there, soothing everything that needs to be soothed and teaching him how to breathe all over again. The notes knead the knots in his muscles, work out stiffness he hadn’t registered and pains he had not known were there.

It’s almost as magical as when TJ plays. _Almost_. Nothing compares to that magic, but this is pretty close, in no small part due to the fact that Mozart’s Piano Sonata No.11 in A Major is the piece TJ was playing when they first met—at that White House gala that Steve had thought would be torture and that had ended up changing his life instead.

Steve leaves the shield by the door and takes off the helmet and gloves on the way, the tension in his body melting away with each step. His eyes fall on the piano in the living room and he shivers, images flooding his mind of TJ sitting on the stool with his chest bare and his fingers on fire, bathed in early morning sunshine or with the lights of Washington D.C. reflected in his eyes.

Once he reaches the kitchen, Steve pauses in the doorway and stares, arms crossed over his chest. He’s smiling like a lunatic, he knows, but he couldn’t help it if he tried (and frankly, he doesn’t want to). He’s hopelessly in love. It’s been a little over a year and Captain America is hopelessly, beyond-any-form-of-redemption in love with the son of a former President and of the current runner-up. Or so D.C. sees them. The way they see it, Steve Rogers is hopelessly in love with TJ Hammond, and it’s as simple as that.

TJ is flipping bacon and pancakes with equal dexterity, hips swaying slowly to the music playing from the authentic 1941 player he keeps in his apartment specifically for Steve. He’s barefoot and wearing nothing but burgundy tartan pajama pants and a thin gray t-shirt, and he’s still the most breathtaking sight Steve has seen.

“Stop staring, Cap. Where are your manners?”

Steve grins. Of course TJ would know he was there. And of course TJ would call him Cap, just to piss him off. Just to tease him, because they have cleared the subject almost at the get-go.

 _“I don’t give a fuck about Captain America,”_ TJ had said, with such a vehemence that Steve had been startled. _“I care about Steve Rogers.”_

And Steve, who had been well on his way to the fall of a lifetime, had crashed all the way down.

He all but surges forward now, the memory making it unbearable to stay away from TJ just one moment longer. He wraps his arms around TJ’s waist and presses a kiss to the back of his neck, inhaling lime-scented shower gel and sandalwood shampoo.

“Hi,” he mumbles against TJ’s skin, the last remains of the mission slipping from his body, stripping him of Captain America and leaving only Steve Rogers behind.

“Hi.” TJ leans back into him, tilting his head to rest against Steve’s shoulder. He lowers the flame under the pan and turns around in Steve’s arms. His clear blue eyes scan Steve’s features carefully, looking for damage. “Are you okay?” He lifts a hand to run his fingertips lightly along the markings covering Steve’s cheekbone—the angry, yellow-and-purple ones that run all the way up to his temple.

“I’m fine,” Steve says, heart pounding on its own accord as he watches the emotions play across TJ’s face.

“Are you hurt anywhere else?”

“TJ,” Steve says, pointed but gentle. “I’m all right. I promise.”

TJ stares at him for the longest moment, looking for those signs that always seem invisible to anyone but him, the ones that will tell him about Steve’s actual condition after a mission. The serum provides enhanced healing abilities, but it can never fool TJ; if Steve is in pain, TJ will know.

But Steve is not in pain now—just stiff and tired and so very happy to be back home after a week-long mission in an undisclosed middle of nowhere.

“Okay,” TJ says, pressing his lips briefly over Steve’s, a soft gesture to reclaim both their presences in the here and now. “Go get cleaned up while I finish here. You need food and at least a 24-hour nap.”

Steve smiles, his stomach fluttering. He has no idea how TJ is able to spot the exhaustion in his limbs when not even his teammates will notice unless he doesn’t bother hiding it, but there you have it. “Will you take that nap with me?”

He doesn’t mean for it to be flirtatious, but TJ’s eyes light up immediately with that devilish glint that never fails to make Steve’s knees go weak.

“Captain!” TJ gasps in mock scandal. “Taking advantage of me already?”

Steve feels himself flush to the tip of his ears. “I…I didn’t mean…”

TJ grins and shushes him with another kiss. “I have a NA meeting in an hour, but when I’m back…” he pulls away and smiles, eyes dancing, “…I’ll be ready to ‘fondue’ as much as you like.”

“Oh, God.” Steve groans. “I knew I should’ve never told you that story.”

TJ’s laughter follows him all the way to the bathroom, and Steve thinks about how odd it is that someone else’s apartment in a city that is not his own, in a century where he doesn’t belong, could feel like home. He also thinks about how he wouldn’t have it any different.

 

* * *

 

_“I gotta put her in the water.”_

_“Please, don’t do this.”_

_“Peggy?”_

_“I’m here.”_

_…_

_“Eight o’clock on the dot. Don’t you dare be late. Understood?”_

_“Understood?”_

_“I gotta put her in the water.”_

_“Don’t do this.”_

_“I gotta—”_

_Cold. It seeps into his very being and does its best to annihilate him, strip him of everything he is until he doesn’t even have lungs to breathe with anymore. Nerves and muscle and blood—all gone. All burnt by ice. Obliterated into scorching glaciers and pitch-black waters._

_Cold._

_“Don’t do this.”_

_“I gotta.”_

“Steve?”

_“Don’t do this.”_

_“I gotta.”_

_“Don’t.”_

_“I gotta put her in the water.”_

_“Don’t do this.”_

Cold. Burning. Freezing. _Drowning._

“Steve, wake up.”

“I gotta…’m sorry…I gotta…”

“Steve!”

Steve jerks awake with a gasp. Air. There’s no air. He has no lungs, they’ve been frozen solid. Useless, the way they used to be before. Before… _before…_

“Steve. Hey.”

There are hands on his face, cupping his cheeks, thumbs stroking along his cheekbones. Warm hands.

Warm.

Warmth.

But he’s cold, isn’t he?

He’s drowning, isn’t he?

“I need you to breathe. Okay?”

He can’t. He has no lungs. Don’t they know he has no lungs?

“Steve, baby. Please. I need you to take a breath. Okay? Just one. For me.”

For… who? Whom should he breathe for? Don’t they know he can’t? Don’t they know he’s drowned already?

“One breath, Steve. Come on. You can do it. You’ve done it before. Come on. With me.”

Before _what_? Before the serum? Before the war? Before Captain America?

“Steve.”

Steve.

Steve Rogers.

Steve Rogers was born without knowing how to breathe. It’s only fitting that Captain America should die with ice in his lungs.

“ _Steve!_ I need you to look at me.”

Without his having any say in the matter, Steve obeys. He blinks—once, twice. Blue eyes swim in front of him. The curve of furrowing lips. Pianist hands on his skin, grounding him.

“…TJ?”

“Yeah.” The flash of a smile, a slightly crooked front tooth that makes the imperfect all the more flawless. “I’m right here. You gotta breathe for me, okay? Come on. With me. In.”

_Drowning._

“Steve!” The hands on his face shake him, firm and gentle. “Breathe with me. In.”

Steve breathes in. His breath hitches and his throat closes halfway up, but he breathes in. Actual air. Thawed-out lungs.

“Good. Out. Slowly.”

Steve breathes out. He’s got lungs again.

“Okay. Let’s do it a few more times, all right? With me, Steve. In.”

He doesn’t know how long they sit there, breathing. He doesn’t register it as the dark around his vision gradually recedes. All he knows is that suddenly he’s in TJ’s bedroom, heart slamming so hard against his chest it’s a wonder it hasn’t cracked a rib, and TJ’s there, his hands still warm on his cheeks.

“Hey,” TJ says, quiet and soft, smiling like he’s a beacon and Steve was lost and has just been guided home. “Are you back with me?”

Steve swallows. He gives one nod, sharp and brief, and TJ lets his hands fall back down onto the sheets and takes Steve’s palms instead, interlacing their fingers.

“I was…I…” Steve swallows again. There are ice shards lodged in his throat. “I was drowning…”

TJ lifts one hand and cards his long fingers through Steve’s hair like he’s caressing the keys of his piano. “You’re all right now. It was just a dream.”

Steve frowns. “No,” he says, because it wasn’t. There was a time when the ice and the water were his reality. His end. “I…I drowned.”

TJ shudders, but that’s the only outward sign of his distress as he pulls Steve to him and wraps his arms around him with fierce determination, as though he could erase the horrors of war and the trauma of loss with that move alone. Perhaps, in a way, he can. He can keep them at bay, at least. He can keep Steve _here_ , in the present. He can keep him from drowning all over again.

“You’re all right now,” TJ repeats, murmurs the truth into Steve’s hair, his mouth pressed against Steve’s temple. “It’s over. You’re safe. You’re here with me. You’re okay.”

“I can’t breathe, TJ…”

“Yes, you can.” TJ maneuvers them until they’re both lying back down, Steve half on top of him and his hands splayed across Steve’s chest, rubbing gentle circles into his strained ribcage. “Yes, you can,” he says again, the steel in his voice daring Steve’s lungs to contradict him. Even Steve starts to believe him. “I’ve got you.”

It takes… well, Steve doesn’t know how long it takes, but eventually he’s breathing again, breathing _for real_ , lungs expanding and everything, air coming in and out. No more water. No more ice. Just TJ’s arms around him and TJ’s lips by his ear, making soothing noises and whispering gentle nonsense that melts the glaciers.

“TJ?” Steve calls out once he can finally trust his voice again.

“Right here,” TJ says immediately, whispers it like a promise against Steve’s skin.

Steve rolls onto his side. He wraps one arm around TJ’s waist and rests his head on his chest, listening to TJ’s steady heartbeat in his ears.

“I’m sorry I woke you,” he says, and he is. They’ve danced this dance before, but Steve has never been able to not apologize. He knows nights aren’t exactly friendly to TJ, either.

“Shhh,” TJ murmurs, fingers running through Steve’s hair in that way they both know will have Steve drifting off soon enough. “It’s all good. Go back to sleep.”

Steve lets his eyes drift shut and concentrates on the feeling of TJ’s fingertips massaging his scalp.

He wishes the world could see TJ’s quiet strength, witness it like he witnesses it every day. Recognize it like he recognizes it. To the world, TJ is still the drug addict son of the former President. It doesn’t matter that he has been sober for thirteen months now. It doesn’t matter that he left that cursed nightclub behind and opened a music school for underprivileged kids instead, smack in the middle of one of D.C.’s worst neighborhoods. None of that matters. The world is just waiting for TJ to slip up again.

They don’t know that TJ is stronger than all of that. Stronger than all of them. They have no idea. But Steve does, and on nights like this, he closes his eyes and lets TJ’s strength teach him how to breathe again.


	2. Weight

_He wants now_  
  
_the weight of a love_  
  
_instead of the debris_  
  
_of nights too well remembered._  
  
_Like a fishhook, there are words_  
  
_caught in his throat._  
  
_He wants to cast out those words into the morning light_  
  
_and watch them disappear into the desert’s dusk._  


— _The Last Cigarette on Earth_ , Benjamin Alire Sáenz

“So where’s that hunky man of yours?”

“Oh, God. Nana!” TJ almost chokes on his drink (which just so happens to be a virgin margarita, and he still can’t quite wrap his head around how second-nature it has become for him to bypass the alcohol).

“What?” Margaret takes a long sip from her own glass (which contains a very non-virgin beverage) and blinks innocently at her grandson. “I’m old, I’m not blind.”

TJ shakes his head, but he’s laughing. As usual. God bless his grandma.

“Nana’s got a point though, TJ,” Doug says, barely lifting his gaze from the stack of papers he’s examining while perched on a stool at the kitchen island. “This is a family dinner. He should be here.”

TJ refrains from rolling his eyes. He knows Doug is under a lot of pressure these days, what with their mother’s campaign having entered the full-swing phase. Proper etiquette has always been able to give Doug a sense of calm and structure, just like it has always unraveled TJ to his very core, and so TJ can’t quite find it in himself to fault his brother for trying to find some stability amongst the mayhem.

“He sends his regrets,” he says, taking another sip from his drink and distantly wishing it was something stronger, “but something came up he had to attend to.”

Doug does lift his head then, to stare at him doubtfully. “You suck at lying, TJ.”

“Ha!” TJ scoffs. “I’m an addict, Dougie. I’m an _excellent_ liar.”

“Don’t talk about yourself that way, honey,” Margaret reprimands. “You’ve been clean for over a year now.”

TJ wants to tell her that it doesn’t matter—that once an addict, always an addict. But he knows the self-deprecation and the anger bubbling underneath the surface are (mostly) the result of a stressful night, so he swallows down the retort and offers his grandma a smile instead.

“Fine,” he snaps, because Doug is still staring at him. “He just came back yesterday from a mission and he’s pretty beat. I told him he could sit this one out.”

Douglas’ demeanor changes instantly. He shifts in his seat, politician’s mask dropping, and frowns in concern. “Is he all right?”

“Yeah. He’s just exhausted. I told him he should use the downtime to rest.”

“Yeah, of course,” Doug says immediately, because if there’s one thing Douglas will never get in the way of, it’s the wellbeing of Captain America.

TJ sighs in relief when the conversation strays from the subject. He wishes Steve was actually resting. Instead, when TJ left him, he was hitting a heavy bag in the gym of TJ’s building. _Repeatedly_. The bag has probably not survived the round, but TJ is more worried about Steve. He knows that’s what Steve does after a night like last night—hitting his demons over and over until they lose consciousness and he’s grounded again.

TJ knows, and he gets it, and God knows he’s really not an expert in healthy coping strategies...but still. He doesn’t have to like it. He feels like he shouldn’t be here. He should be at home, unclenching Steve’s fists and untangling the dark mess that are Steve’s thoughts after a mission.

TJ is not a soldier. He can’t follow rules to save his life, much less orders. But he has made it his mission to care for the man that is Captain America. The world may see a superhero, some may see a vigilante, but TJ only sees Steve. Steve is complex, and brave, and kind, and stubborn. Steve is a soldier with PTSD that tends to rear up its head after assignments, and TJ is failing his own mission by being in his mother’s kitchen right now.

Unable to help himself, he takes his phone out of his pocket and fires off a quick text, fingers flying over the screen in his restlessness.

 _ **\- I do hope you’re not still punching stuff… ;)**    
_He adds a winky face at the end, just to make sure it doesn’t sound too harsh or hovering…not that Steve has mastered the nuances of text messaging, anyway.

To his surprise, he gets a reply almost immediately. 

**_\- Nah. Having a drink with Sam._ **

Thank God for Sam Wilson.

The phone vibrates again in his hand not two seconds later.

**_\- How are you doing?_ **

TJ smiles. Steve knows. He knows family dinners put TJ on edge, especially after a tense night.

**_\- I’m good. Nana misses you._ **

**_\- Give her a kiss for me._ **

**_\- Are you insane? She might have a heart attack from the mental image alone._ **

**_\- I think she could take me. ;)_ **

TJ chokes on his drink.

**_\- You are the worst. Say hi to Sam and enjoy your drink._ **

_Thank God_ for Sam Wilson.

“TJ!”

TJ jumps. When he looks up, the annoyed expression on Doug’s face tells him his brother has been trying to get his attention for a while.

“ _What_?” TJ snaps. He _really_ doesn’t want to be here. He wants to be at home, having a non-drink with Steve and Sam.

“I _said_ , when you’re done sexting with your boyfriend, there’s something I need to warn you about.”

“Oh, fuck off, Dougie,” TJ retorts easily. “What is it?”

Douglas hesitates, and unease instantly sneaks under TJ’s skin. “Mom’s gonna want to talk to you about something. I feel like I should give you the heads-up.”

From her seat beside TJ on the couch, Margaret scoffs. “Oh, Jesus. That can’t be good.”

TJ has to agree. “Just spit it out, Doug.”

Douglas takes a breath. “You know we’ll be kicking off a string of campaign events in D.C. next week.”

The hint of unease in TJ’s stomach becomes a stirring worm. “Yeah. And…?”

Douglas takes a long sip of red wine, stalling. TJ glares daggers at him. “Mom wants to ask you and Steve to be at the first one, next Wednesday.”

Anger explodes within TJ’s chest so abruptly that he startles himself. “No,” he says, voice hard and clipped like rifle shots. He all but jumps off the couch, unable to sit still and contain the outburst that is running through his veins like hot fire. “ _Fuck_ , no. I told you I don’t want to have anything to do with this campaign. I _told you_ , Douglas!”

“It’s okay,” Douglas says quickly. He has the good grace to look ashamed even as he rushes in with a quick sidetracking, so like their father that it makes TJ’s nerves vibrate with a hint of disgust he never thought he would feel about his brother. “You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to. Just Steve will be fine.”

He slips it in so casually it almost gets lost within the roar of everything else. And if TJ wasn’t TJ, if he hadn’t grown up within a family that has made a lifestyle out of using their tongues like weapons, he would have missed it. But, TJ being TJ, his ears hone in on the words like a sniper honing in on a target, and his already boiling blood threatens to spill from his mouth. He can almost taste the copper and bile at the back of his throat.

“ _What_ did you just say?” he hisses, staring at his brother in incredulous rage.

Douglas finally unglues himself from the stool at the kitchen island, standing up with a hand outstretched in a placating gesture. “Now, just hear me out—”

“Are you _fucking kidding me_ right now?” TJ explodes.

“What is going on here?”

TJ whips around to see his mother standing just inside the doorway, looking between the two brothers. Elaine Barrish is standing proud and shocked, wearing a tailored navy-blue pantsuit. TJ doesn’t believe for a second that she left the politician at the door the way Steve leaves his shield whenever he comes home. Especially not now, while smack in the middle of a presidential campaign.

Elaine’s confusion lasts for only a few moments before realization blooms across her face. She heaves a deep sigh and walks further into the room.

“You told him,” she says, and she doesn’t have to wait for Douglas’ response to know she’s right. “Really, Douglas. I told you to wait for me, that I would talk to them.”

“Right, so you could persuade me better?” TJ scoffs. He feels like he might throw up at any second. “Oh my God,” he breathes out as realization hits. “Is that why you wanted Steve to be here tonight?” He stares at his brother in shock and feels just a pinch of satisfaction when Doug shifts his weight on his feet, uncomfortable. “‘Family dinner,’ my ass. And where’s Anne, by the way?”

“She…uh…” Doug clears his throat. “She’s in San Francisco, meeting a client.”

Margaret scoffs loudly into her drink. “Yeah, she’d probably tell you to fuck off if you pulled a stunt like this in her presence.”

Douglas’ eyes go wide. “Grandma!”

“What? You ambushed him!” she retorts, gesturing vaguely toward TJ.

“Okay,” Elaine says, tossing her coat on the back of a chair and outstretching her hands in that soothing gesture Douglas has perfected down to a T. “Let’s talk about this.”

“There’s nothing to talk about!” TJ snaps. His head is spinning. “I’m not doing it, and neither is Steve.”

Elaine casts a quick look around. “Steve’s not here?”

“No, _mother_ ,” TJ retorts, that decades-old bitterness creeping back into his voice. And he’s so grateful that Steve is not here, so he can’t hear TJ sound like _that_. “Steve’s not here. And thank God he isn’t, because he’d be too polite to tell you to forget it.”

“TJ, listen—”

“No, _you_ listen.” TJ takes one step forward, body coiled so tight he feels like he might break in two at any moment. “Steve is my boyfriend. He’s not a tool for your campaign.” He swallows hard, and then he dares to go even one step further. “And neither am I.”

“TJ, it’s not…” Elaine trails off. She heaves another deep sigh, and TJ can’t decide whether she’s trying to choose the right words or if she’s exasperated by a son who is so far out of his depth when it comes to politics that he just can’t understand her. It’s probably a little of both. “I’m not trying to make you into a tool. Or Steve, for that matter. But you have to understand, we have an actual shot here. An _actual_ shot at making this country better. _For real_. I don’t like it any more than you do, but it is a fact that with Captain America by our side, we could win a lot of consent. We could have an even better chance.”

TJ stares at her. If he hadn’t spent all of his life listening to this exact type of speeches, he would have fallen for it. He really would have. She’s good. She’s so damn good it breaks his heart.

“Bullshit,” he says instead, and he says it quiet, but he can hear the venom and the trembling in his own voice. “It’s not about ‘making the Country better.’ That’s not why you’re running. You just wanna stick it to the men.”

Elaine opens her mouth to say something, but TJ won’t give her the chance. Not this time. He plows on.

“You act like you’ve got nothing to prove, when that’s all you’ve been trying to do for the past twenty-three years. You wanna prove you’re just as good as them. Hell, you wanna prove you’re _better_. And that’s fine, Mom. I support you, I do. But it’s not my fight. It’s not Steve’s, either. Leave us out of it.”

Elaine stares at him for the longest moment. He has no idea whether he’s gotten through to her; she’s unreadable. God, TJ hates her so much sometimes. But he loves her more, and that’s what breaks him—over and over and over again. He wants out and she pulls him back in. They all do.

Except for Steve.

Steve who’s having a drink with his best friend and trying to hold himself together through horror visions none of these people will ever know the beginning of. Steve whose side TJ should be by tonight, instead of standing in his mother’s kitchen arguing like the pack of rabid dogs they can be when they’re thrown into a room together.

“I’m leaving.” He hears the words come out of his mouth almost from a distance. He goes to grab his jacket off the couch’s armrest and prays this is the last of it.

But of course, it never is. Not when the Hammonds are involved.

“TJ, you’re overreacting." Doug's voice reaches him like a bullet to the gut. "It’s just one appearance—”

“I’m overreacting?” TJ spins around so quickly he almost trips. He must look at least half as enraged as he feels, because Douglas winces and takes a step back. His heart is thundering so loud in his chest that he almost can’t hear his own shouts. “You have no idea, _no idea_ what that man puts himself through every day. For you. For this fucking country. For this fucking _planet_. You have _no idea_! And you’re standing there thinking about how to exploit him, and I’m overreacting?!”

His mother tries next. “We don’t wish to exploit him—”

“BULLSHIT!” The roar stuns everyone into silence. TJ feels like his whole body is vibrating from a high unlike anything he has ever experienced before, not even on his worst cocaine days. God knows he has been angry a lot in his life, but never like this. Never so utterly and completely that his whole being is filled with it. “This is fucked up, even for you, Mom. For both of you. I may be an addict, but you’re more fucked in the head than I am.”

“TJ!” Elaine stares at him with a mixture of shock and scandal and something else, something that makes TJ wonder if maybe some of his words are finally registering.

She looks toward the couch where Margaret is still sitting with her glass as though frozen in her hand. “Mother, any time you would like to jump in…”

“What do you expect me to say?” Margaret says. “The boy’s got a point.”

TJ feels a surge of affection so strong for his grandma that he’s almost left dizzy with it. He walks up to the couch in two long strides and plants a sound kiss to her cheek. Then he stands to his full height and glares at his mother and brother, who are both looking at him like he’s a ticking bomb, and _fuck_ , they really have no idea, do they? They thought he was bound to explode back when he was all over the place, but they have no idea how much of a bigger, more dangerous mess he is now that he’s sober.

“I’m leaving,” he says again, and he does.

It takes all of his self-control for him not to double over and retch in the bushes just outside the house, tension and fury and disappointment and that decades-old hurt all stirring and swashing and churning in his stomach. But he swallows the bile down and puts one foot in front of the other.

Because Steve is having a drink with Sam, and TJ just wants to be there.


	3. Rain

_It rained inside me_  
  
_it is raining inside my neck_  
  
_the rain falls in sheets inside long sheets inside_  
  
_all the rain is falling inside collapsing spit  
  
__  
_ — _800 Days: Libation_ , Tiana Clark

 

Steve has learned to expect pretty much anything whenever TJ interacts with his family—from uneventful evenings to vitriol-laced showdowns that would have even Tony, with his sharper-than-blades tongue, stare in appalment if he ever were to witness them. He has learned to expect pretty much anything from the aftermath, too—from TJ seeking comfort to TJ clamping up tight within himself.

What Steve was not expecting tonight was for TJ to come back soaked to the bone.

He exchanges a quick glance with Sam when they hear the key in the lock, because they both know it’s not a good sign for TJ to be early.

“Baby, back so soon—”

The words die in Steve’s throat the minute he looks up and takes in TJ standing just inside the doorway, dripping wet. And yes, it _is_ pouring outside, but Steve thought… he doesn’t know what he thought, but it certainly wasn’t _this_.

He’s off the couch and striding over to TJ faster than the blink of an eye.

“TJ, what happened?”

“Nothing.” TJ looks up at him and shrugs. “I took a walk.”

TJ’s eyes are bloodshot and red-rimmed as they peer out from behind drenched dark locks. He’s been crying. Something within Steve stirs and protests at the sight.

“You’re shaking.”

He is. Steve can see the tremor in TJ’s body, the restlessness in his fingers even as his arms hang limply at his sides. He looks miserable, and Steve is pretty sure the rain is only partially responsible.

“Yeah, well,” TJ flashes him a smile that doesn’t reach anywhere near his eyes, “it’s not exactly warm out there.” He presses a quick and soft kiss to Steve’s mouth, lingering for just a moment. “I’m gonna go dry off, you guys don’t mind me.”

“TJ—”

“I’m fine, Steve.” TJ pats his chest as though _Steve_ was the one in need of comforting and crosses over to the bedroom, flashing a look and another one of those fake smiles at Sam as he passes. “Hey, Sam.”

“Hey, T.,” Sam says, and he’s watching him with knowing eyes that TJ studiously avoids.

“That’s not good,” Sam announces once the bedroom door has clicked shut.

“No, it’s not,” Steve agrees, eyes fixed on the door as though his gaze could bore through the wood and spot TJ. He’s not quite sure how long it is before he finally turns back to Sam. “Do you think I should let him cool off or…?”

Sam rolls his eyes. “Go to him, man! I’ll make some tea, the guy must be freezing.”

Steve nods absently and does exactly as Sam says: he goes to TJ.  
  


*  
  


He doesn’t like what he finds.

TJ is shaking. He’s sitting at the foot of the king-size bed, leaning precariously on the edge of the mattress the same way he has leaned precariously on the edge of life before, as though he might plummet downward at any moment, and he’s shaking. He’s got his hands in his hair, curled into fists around his own dark locks, pianist fingers digging into his own scalp, and he’s shaking. He’s bouncing his knee up and down in a jerky, nervous litany…and he’s shaking.

It reminds Steve so much of the beginning, when TJ was getting clean and he sometimes got overwhelmed by his lust for a line, that his stomach rolls, painful and sharp. He half wonders if they’re back there and dismisses the thought almost immediately, feeling so horribly guilty about it.

He sits next to TJ and doesn’t speak right away, only places a hand on TJ’s back and leaves it there. TJ’s clothes are still drenched, but he doesn’t seem to care or notice that the sheets are getting wet. The part of Steve that remembers the dangers of rain and wet clothes in a time of limited medical knowledge and dented immune systems cringes.

“Baby,” he finally speaks, keeping his voice low. He has since learned that, after a dinner at his mother’s, TJ spooks easily and shuts down even easier. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

TJ shakes his head and keeps his gaze firmly planted on his own soaked knees.

Steve’s stomach twists a little more violently; no matter what, TJ always, _always_ meets his eyes. “TJ.”

TJ takes an audible breath. It comes out hitched and half-strangled. “I thought it’d be different this time,” he finally says, and his voice is scratchy and defeated and _so_ _damn angry_ , underneath, that Steve is a little thrown. “I thought I’d made myself clear.”

“What are you talking about?” Steve lets his hand travel up TJ’s back to his nape. He lets his thumb stroke the base of TJ’s hair, fingertips tangling into the wet locks.

TJ doesn’t relax into the touch. It hits Steve in pettier ways than he’d like to admit, and it also puts him so much further on edge.

TJ keeps his head bowed and lets out a sound that suspiciously resembles a sniff. When he finally looks up, he’s not crying, but he looks raw and cracked enough that all Steve wants to do is send Sam home and shut the door on the world and keep them all away, stop them from coming for TJ over and over again.

TJ smiles. He visibly forces it out (for whose sake is not quite clear), and Steve’s heart breaks. “Nothing,” he says. “Never mind.”

“TJ—”

“Steve, please. Just drop it.”

Steve does. It’s not in his nature, but TJ looks like he’s barely holding it together and desperately wants to succeed in doing just that, and Steve drops it.

“Okay,” he says, and he wraps one arm around TJ’s shoulders and pulls him close. “Okay.”

TJ leans into him in that way he had at the very beginning of their relationship, the way that used to turn Steve inside out: that heartbreaking mixture of gratefulness and incredulity.

Steve holds him a little tighter and drops a kiss to the top of his head, his lips touching cold, wet hair.

“I need you to get out of these wet clothes, okay? Please.”

TJ nods but doesn’t make any attempts to move.

Steve doesn’t move either; he sits still and lets TJ soak up whatever comfort he will allow to be given.

It’s a few minutes before TJ finally stirs and sits up straight again. Instead of pulling away, however, he cups Steve’s face in his hands and kisses him. It’s soft and slow and languid, and Steve is pretty sure there’s a message in there somewhere, but he can’t decipher it.

When they break apart, TJ’s red-rimmed eyes are shining with a steely determination that Steve recognizes but that he doesn’t know what to associate with, given his complete ignorance of recent events.

“You know I love you, right?”

Steve wants to ask a million questions. He wants to ask what that has to do with anything, and is TJ all right, and what the hell happened. Instead, he says the only thing he can say given the circumstances.

“I know.” Because he really does, and it makes his head spin every day. “I love you, too.”

TJ smiles, and it’s shy and bright and a little disbelieving—and it’s Steve’s favorite thing.

“Why don’t you jump in the shower? I’ll get you some dry clothes. Fresh out of the drier.”

It’s a silly little thing about TJ, the sort of silly little thing that adds up and makes up a person. TJ loves slipping into clean clothes fresh from the drier. He likes the smell, the cleanness of it. It makes him feel, he once confessed, like perhaps he can be clean, too. Get a clean slate. It had broken Steve’s heart a little, that statement, but it also made him so much prouder when he watched TJ create that clean slate for himself.

TJ only nods now. There is no flirting, no snarky innuendos about shower sex.

It puts Steve on guard. He squeezes TJ’s knee in a silent display of support and stands up. When he closes the bedroom door behind himself, TJ still hasn’t moved.

 

* * *

_“He won’t talk to me, Sam.”_

Sam doesn’t like it when TJ won’t talk to Steve; it makes for a very upset Steve Rogers, and for a dangerously withdrawn TJ Hammond. Sam hates it when either of those things happens, let alone when they happen at the same time.

He leaves Steve in the laundry room and goes on a mission of his own. Unsurprisingly, once he has been given the go-ahead to enter the bedroom, he finds TJ still sitting at the foot of the bed.

“Hey, T.,” Sam says. He approaches cautiously, because if he has learned one thing over the past year or so since TJ has entered their lives, it’s that TJ’s walls are a very unpredictable armor. Sometimes they’ll go down easy, sometimes they'll be unmovable, and sometimes there’ll be fucking archers shooting at you from the bastions.

“Hey.” TJ’s voice is studiously flat, but there’s a scratchy quality to it that tells Sam the breaking point isn’t too far ahead.

“Are you okay?” Sam keeps his tone conversational as he takes a seat next to TJ. He’s pleased when TJ lets him.

TJ lets out a self-deprecating snort. “Sure. I’m the king of okay.”

“TJ—”

“They wanted to drag him into it,” TJ fires off, snippy and angry and visibly barely holding back from screaming into the void or in someone’s face.

“Who wanted to drag who where?” Sam asks, still cautious, because you never know what could spook TJ.

“Steve,” TJ snaps, stares at him like he’s the densest person he’s ever had the misfortune of dealing with. “My mother and Doug wanted him to be part of the campaign, take part in some events.”

Sam stores the information away as methodically and objectively as he can considering the spark of anger that ignites in his chest. He knows it’s part of the package, but he still hates it with a passion when people exploit Steve’s image. There’s been enough of that to last the man a lifetime and then some. Besides, Steve is so much more than a shield and a can-do attitude.

He also stores away the fact that TJ has referred to Elaine as “mother.” It’s never “mom” when she truly hurts him, when she really gets to him—it’s always “mother.” Sam hates seeing TJ hurt almost as much as he hates seeing Steve exploited.

“Did you tell Steve?” he asks, forcing himself to approach the subject objectively.

“No,” TJ says, and his eyes suddenly fire up with a warrior’s light to rival any Avenger. “’Cause it’s not happening, I told them to shove it.”

Sam stares at him. “You did?”

“Of course I did, what do you take me for?” TJ says, irritably. “As far as I’m concerned, when he’s not on a mission, he’s not Captain America. He’s just Steve, and Steve is not a tool to get my mother her fucking victory.”

Sam wants to hug him, because _fuck_ , it was about time Steve found someone who actually  _sees_ him, but he’s pretty sure his touch wouldn’t be welcome right now. “So you told them no.”

“I told them they could forget it. I just thought…”

TJ trails off, and Sam presses on before he can lose him to his spiraling thoughts. “What, T.?”

TJ gives a half shrug and goes back to staring at his hands in his lap. “I thought I might escape it this time, you know? The campaign drama and the spotlight. I asked Dougie to keep me out of it. I thought he’d talked to her. I thought they’d listen.”

Sam also notes that Douglas is always "Doug" or "Dougie," never "Douglas,"  _ever_ , no matter how badly TJ is hurting.

“I’m sorry, TJ,” Sam says, because what else can he say? What else can he offer? “I do think you should talk to Steve, though.”

“Steve doesn’t need this crap.”

“TJ—”

“He had a nightmare last night, did he tell you?”

Sam blinks. It’s an abrupt change of subject, but if he knows TJ all but a little, it won’t be as unrelated as it seems. “No,” he says carefully, studying TJ’s troubled face for any signs of where this may be going. “He didn’t say.”

“He dreamed about drowning. On the plane.” TJ runs a hand nervously through his rain-soaked hair. “He woke up convinced he couldn’t breathe. I had to coax him out of it.”

Sam inhales sharply. He knows Steve’s PTSD tends to rear up its head after a mission (hence tonight’s hangout), but Steve never lets him see the ugly parts. Those are only for TJ, and even then, Sam suspects TJ has to fight and claw his way in to truly see it all.

“I’m sorry, T.,” he says after a moment. “I know it’s hard.”

“ _Fuck_ hard,” TJ spits, with a vehemence that makes Sam pause and blink. “It’s not about that, I can take it. But like I said, Steve woke up in the middle of the night thinking he was drowning, and he was on his third heavy bag when I left for dinner tonight, so no, Sam, he _really_ doesn’t need to hear about the absolute shitshow that is my family.”

Sam wants to protest. He wants to say TJ’s got it all wrong and his struggles are just as valid and he should give Steve the chance to be there for him…but the truth is, TJ’s got a point.

Sam is silent for a few more moments, racking his brain for words that just won’t come, and then he gives in. “Fine,” he says. “At least let him take care of you, okay? For both your sakes,” he adds hastily when _something_ (pride, self-preservation, a hard-learned line of defense) flashes across TJ’s features.

“Fine,” TJ concedes, and Sam almost whoops. “I’m not letting them do that to Steve, Sam,” he says quietly after a beat or two, his now-burning stare fixed in front of him and his hands clenched into fists in his lap. “I’ll die first.”

And fuck, Sam _really_ wants to hug him. He wants to reach out and pull TJ to him and say all the things that should be said. Things like, _“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry you’ve been caught in the crossfire of a life you never asked for.”_ And, _“I’m sorry your family just doesn’t get it.”_ And, _“I’m sorry they don’t really know you.”_ And, _“I’m sorry you’ve had to fight every day for your own identity since you were a kid.”_ And, _“I’m sorry you’re still having to fight.”_

Sam wants to say thank you. _“Thank you for loving Steve so fiercely you’ll go against anyone who tries to use him.”_ And, _“Thank you for seeing him.”_ And, _“Thank you for not giving a damn about Captain America.”_ And, _“Thank you for taking care of Steve Rogers.”_

But Sam doesn’t say any of it. Instead, he clears his throat and deflects. “Yeah, how about…not,” he says, picking up the discarded towel on the bed TJ must have forgotten all about and throwing it at him as he stands. “Dry yourself off before that man has a fit.”

He heads out of the room in time to cross paths with Steve, who’s coming in with an armful of dry clothes.

“Damn,” Sam says under his breath. “Your boy’s _intense_.”

Steve grins like he has just received the biggest compliment on the face of the planet. “I know.”

Sam stares at him. “You’re both lunatics.”

Steve only grins wider. “I know.”

Sam rolls his eyes and heads back to the kitchen to work on the tea. ‘Cause really, what else can he do?

 


	4. Protect

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) Apologies for the late update. The outline is finally done, which means updates will now be much more frequent. I estimate one/two chapters per week.  
> 2) Thank you so much for the comments and kudos. You all have made my day/week/month!

_To not do what you can_

_to protect someone,_

_that’s cowardly._  


— _Tiger Lily_ , Jodi Lynn Anderson

 

TJ feels anxious and fidgety, his upset and unease two tangible, living things inside his body, running through his muscles like an electric current in the form of nervous energy.

There’s a small and yet persistent voice in his head telling him about the wonders of cocaine. TJ stomps on it, kicks the life out of it until the voice becomes barely the shadow of a whisper. Even then, it’s still too loud. The thing is, it shouldn’t be there at all. He knows it’s unreasonable to expect coke to hold no attraction whatsoever during stressful times, barely a year after getting sober, but he still can’t help feeling like he should know and do better.

Shame quickly adds to the poisonous emotions already running through his veins. It’s never enough. No matter what he does or how hard he tries, it’s never enough. _He_ ’s never enough.

The conversation with Sam from earlier that day has been replaying in his head nonstop. He knew, he _knew_ something was up; it’s been nagging at him ever since Steve came back from his latest mission. After much debating with himself and following the disaster of the previous night, TJ finally found the courage to pick up the phone and ask Sam outright.

_“Has he been to any VA meetings lately?”_

_“Not lately, no.”_

_“How long?”_

The hesitation from the other end of the line cut him right through.

_“How long, Sam?”_

_“Three months.”_

TJ’s stomach clenches all over again at the memory.

Three months. Three months is a long fucking time to go without a support group. TJ should know. In fact, he _does_ know. Steve never speaks at the VA meetings, not yet anyway, but he listens to the stories of others and finds elements of similarity and comradery, and he says it helps. Three months is a long fucking time to go without that help.

Three months is also a long fucking time for TJ not to notice, and guilt comes sharp and ugly to turn his insides upside down. How has he missed this? He’s seen Steve’s PTSD get worse after every mission )and, to be fair, tried to raise a red flag only to be rebuffed every time), but he has never thought to question Steve’s coping mechanisms (or lack thereof). He has never thought to check in with the VA. He just assumed it was a particularly rough patch and left it at that, choosing to follow Steve’s lead and go through the motions.

How has he missed it?

_How?_

“Mr. Hammond?”

How could he—

“TJ?”

TJ snaps out of it and refocuses on the small group of students in the room, all of who are staring at him. Sitting at the piano, fifteen-year-old Ian (blue-eyed and lost and closeted, and he reminds TJ so much of himself at that age that he’s a little terrified for the kid) is looking at him with a mixture of concern and expectation on his face.

_‘Shit.’_

“Sorry,” he says, forcing his mind to put Steve aside and focus. It’s a herculean task. “That was beautiful, Ian.” 

Ian stares at him like he’s an idiot. “No, it wasn’t. I butchered it.”

“He kinda did,” Ashleigh speaks up.

TJ cringes. These kids, for all of their misfortunes, are incredibly supportive of each other; TJ has worked hard to have them come out of their shells with one another and round out all those sharp angles. So for one of them to speak ill of another’s performance…well, he  _really_ must’ve zoned out.

More guilt twists and rolls around in his stomach. There’s been enough not giving these kids attention to last them all a few lifetimes over, and here’s TJ getting distracted and pulling his focus off them the way he’s sworn to himself never to do.

“I’m so sorry,” he says. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

“It’s cool.” Ian shrugs like he has barely even noticed he was being overlooked.

Something inside TJ cracks and breaks, if only a little. “No, it’s not.” He runs a hand through his hair and lets out a slow breath, fighting to keep his unsteady emotions under control. “Will you play it again for me?”

Ian grins like he’s been given the coolest gift of his life. “Sure thing, Mr. Hammond.”

Such a simple request, and the kid lights up like a Christmas tree. TJ suddenly understands the appeal of hitting a punching bag until the metal hooks snap.

Sure enough, Ian _does_ butcher the sonata. TJ is racking his brain for a gentle way to let him know there’s a lot of work to be done when he’s the one to suddenly lose the attention of the whole class. The kids have gone silent, an unadulterated undercurrent of excitement buzzing among them so intensely that TJ can almost feel it vibrating on his skin.

He follows their wide-eyed stares and, despite everything, can’t help but grin. Steve is standing just past the side door of the auditorium, wearing tight jeans ( _thank you_ , Natasha), a white t-shirt, and the brown leather jacket he wears whenever he rides his motorcycle. There’s no helmet, of course. It has always made TJ somewhat nervous, the fact that Steve will ride that big bike of his without wearing any form of protection, but he realizes how ridiculous it would be to suggest a motorcycle helmet to Captain America, and so he has never said anything and kept his anxieties to himself.

Steve is holding a small bunch of red roses in one hand and sporting a slightly uncertain smile on his face, and after his conversation with Sam, TJ doesn’t know whether he wants to hit him or kiss him senseless.

“All right,” he announces after a moment, checking the clock on the wall. It’s about time the lesson ended, anyway. “Class dismissed. I’ll see you all tomorrow.”

It takes a few moments for the kids to snap out of their stupor and start moving, but eventually, twelve admiring stares are reluctantly dragged off the hero in the auditorium. TJ really can’t blame his students for being in awe of Steve, even though he knows it’s really Captain America that’s got them so captivated.

“Hi, guys,” Steve greets as he walks forward. He’s rewarded with more starstruck ogling, a few half-mumbled greetings, and just a couple of louder, bolder hellos.

Ian visibly does his best to keep his eyes fixed on his own shoes as he slings his backpack over his shoulder and walks past Steve, but TJ can see the adoration on the kid’s face, accompanied by hormones and a whole lot of self-loathing.

He somehow manages to catch Ian’s gaze and winks, willing the kid to relax a little. The teen’s shoulders slump ever so slightly, and TJ is eventually rewarded with a small but sincere smile that warms his insides in a way he has never thought possible.

Once all the students have cleared out, Steve covers the short distance left between them and cups the back of TJ’s head gently, pressing a soft kiss to his lips.

“I hope I didn’t interrupt. I thought you’d be done.”

“Nah,” TJ says, and he _really_ can’t blame Ian. His head is spinning a little. “We were just about finished, anyway.”

“These are for you,” Steve says, holding out the bright red roses held together by brown wrapping paper.

Something within TJ pulls and tugs, fills him with a vague sense of wonder. He tries to remember whether anyone has ever gotten him flowers before Steve, and he comes up blank.

“I should hope so,” he says, covering it all up with humor and a smirk, but he knows his eyes are doing the talking even as he leans in to take the flowers and press a kiss to the side of Steve’s jaw. “Thank you.”

Steve all but beams at him. “I thought we could go out to dinner. That Thai place you like.”

TJ, who has reverently set down the flowers on the piano stool and is busy collecting music sheets, stops shuffling papers to stare at Steve in suspicion. Something’s off. “What’s the occasion?”

“No occasion,” Steve says, too quickly. “Can’t a guy treat his fella nice?”

TJ arches an eyebrow. “I know something’s up when you slip into 1940s lingo.”

Steve hesitates. He shifts on his feet, looking almost comical with how uncomfortable he is. “It’s just…you seemed pretty torn up last night. I wanted to do something nice for you.”

“Ah.” And _there_ it is. TJ can feel Steve’s helplessness radiate off of him in waves, and he hates it almost as much as he hates the fact that his family still holds so much power over him. “Thank you, but you don’t have to do that. I’m good.”

He’s lying through his teeth, of course, but he can’t bear the flowers and the dinner to be so closely related to the mess that is his relationship with his family. He can’t give them power over his life with Steve, too.

“Do you…” Steve clears his throat. “Do you not wanna?”

TJ looks up. Steve looks awkward and hesitant, and that 1930s Brooklyn lilt slips in and goes right under TJ’s skin. He forgets all about notebooks and music sheets and walks up to Steve, feeling himself being pulled like Steve’s a planet and TJ _has_ to be in his orbit.

It’s nothing new, really, this hold Steve’s got on him, but it gets to TJ’s head every time, makes his blood rush and boil and gives him a high like no drug ever has.

He places an open palm on Steve’s chest and presses a soft kiss to his lips, smiling when he feels Steve relax. “Of course I wanna,” he says quietly. “It’s just…I don’t want it to be because of my family, because of something they did or said. I don’t…”

He takes a deep breath. The words are still slow to come. He’s not used to this. He’s not used to speaking up and speaking out. He’s only used to lashing out, has had decades of practice, and he’s still finding his bearings when it comes to expressing his needs. Communicating. Trying to be heard.

Steve does hear him, though. _Always_. In fact, Steve is the first person who’s truly heard him in a really long time, if ever.

“I don’t want to give them that much power,” TJ finally murmurs.

“Then we’ll just do it for us.” Steve doesn’t miss a beat. He doesn’t make a big deal out of TJ’s admission. He just offers an alternative route, just like that. Simple as that. No more, no less.

TJ wants so much to say yes. He wants to sink against Steve’s chest and take the flowers and go to his favorite restaurant and forget the world for one night. But the world is right here with them, in this auditorium, and TJ is done pretending it doesn’t exist. His days of sticking his head in the sand are over.

“We need to talk, Steve.”

“Yeah,” Steve says after a moment. “I guess we do.”

TJ does a double-take. “What do you mean?”

Steve sighs. There’s a kind of bone-deep sadness in his eyes that stops TJ short and breaks the breath in his throat. “Let’s sit down.”

TJ can’t sit down. TJ is rooted to the spot, heart hammering wildly in his chest. Because he knows, he _knows_ what “we need to talk” and “sit down” mean.

His father was right. All those months ago, more than a year past, when Steve asked him out on a second date (TJ barely even knew what a date was, but Steve is a traditional guy), his father warned him:

 _“You’d better walk the line this time, son,”_ Bud said. _“’Cause Captain America ain’t gonna want to get mixed up with someone who’s got a bad habit they just can’t kick.”_

TJ doesn’t know whether his father said that to finally snap him out of it and slap him straight into rehab, or if Bud truly has no faith left in his son. Whatever the case, the words have stuck, both the said and the unsaid. TJ heard it all.

 _“Someone like you,”_ he heard, glaringly obvious between his father’s lines, and whether that’s what Bud meant or not, that’s all TJ can hear whenever he thinks back on that conversation. _“The likes of you.”_

The words have stuck, and now they replay in his head like a horror story as Steve stands in front of him and tells him that they need to talk and that they should sit down.

_“Captain America ain’t gonna want to get mixed up with the likes of you.”_

TJ tries to swallow. His mouth is dry.

Steve has brought him flowers and invited him to dinner. He wouldn’t do that if he wanted to break up, would he?

Unless it was a way to sweeten the blow.

But Steve wouldn’t do that, would he?

Steve is kind, isn’t he?

Steve is different.

Still, TJ can imagine it all. He sees it clear as day and painfully sharp in his mind’s eye. He sees himself sitting in his favorite restaurant with the man he was just starting to think might be the love of his life, being broken up with over pad thai.

He knows he’s spiraling, but he has no idea how to stop.

_“Captain America ain’t gonna want to get mixed up with someone like you.”_

“TJ?”

TJ blinks. Steve is standing very close to him, and he wonders when that happened. “Yeah,” he replies weakly, because that’s all he can think of saying and all he can get out.

Steve frowns at him in concern. “You’ve gone awfully pale on me.” He touches a hand to TJ’s cheek, his scowl deepening. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” TJ forces himself to snap out of it, pushing the gnawing words to the back of his mind. “Sorry. I’m listening.”

Steve stares at him uncertainly for a moment, then he guides him to sit on one of the chairs in the front row. He keeps his hand on the small of TJ’s back the whole time, as though he fears TJ may fall down at any second. TJ’s heart is galloping too fast and too painfully for him to give false reassurances that he’s not going to keel over anytime soon.

Steve sits down next to him and TJ can’t look away, no matter how much he wants to. He feels like he’s looking at a car crash, morbidly fascinated and unable to tear his gaze away from the tragedy that is unfolding in front of his very eyes.

“Douglas stopped by your place this morning. He wanted to apologize to you. He told me about what happened.”

TJ blinks—once, twice, three times. The words sink in slowly, like he’s hearing them from underwater. The relief that sweeps over him as it all finally registers is so strong that he almost passes out from the sheer force of his emotions, but it’s quickly replaced with an uncomfortable tightening of his stomach as he realizes that Steve _knows_.

“Oh,” he says, eloquently.

He should say more, he knows, but the words just won’t come.

Steve lets out a long sigh. He doesn’t seem mad, nor does he look like someone who may want to break up, not with the way he’s looking at TJ—blue eyes a deeper blue than usual and filled with that mixture of concern and deep-seated empathy that used to terrify TJ at the beginning but is really what reeled him in. No one, _no one_ has ever looked at him like that. Until Steve.

“You should’ve told me.”

“No,” TJ says immediately, the by-now ingrained reflex to protect Steve strong enough to bypass even his current state of post-scare-of-a-lifetime stupor. “I really shouldn’t have.”

“Why not?”

TJ gives a small smile. Something stirs inside his gut—fear and sorrow and guilt and the overwhelming feeling of not being enough. “You’re really gonna make me say it?”

“Say what?” Steve is frowning as he reaches out and covers TJ’s hand with his own. “What’s going on?”

TJ stares down at Steve’s hand—knuckles hardened by war and a fight that has been going on for two lifetimes over, and yet…and yet, there’s another fight raging, one that Steve won’t talk about. One that TJ is done letting him fight on his own.

“I don’t want you anywhere near this campaign. I don’t want you in the public eye any more than you already are. You…” TJ takes a deep breath. Steve is not going to like this. He turns his palm upward and tangles their fingers together, squeezing. “You’ve got bigger things to worry about right now.”

“What are you—”

“I talked to Sam.” TJ cuts him off before Steve can finish the sentence and they both have to suffer through another denial.

He watches as a hint of panic flashes across Steve’s features, but it gives him no satisfaction to have the cards finally laid out on the table for both of them to see. It’s no fun being called out. TJ knows. TJ has been there, where Steve is now—stuck in a loop of denial and belittling that is bound to go nowhere. He doesn’t want that for Steve. He can’t let that happen. Steve is so much better than that. Steve is so much better than him.

_“Captain America ain’t gonna want to get mixed up with the likes of you.”_

TJ tightens his hold on Steve’s hand and pushes the words to the back of his mind where they can destroy him later.

“He says you haven’t been to a VA meeting in three months.”

Steve looks stricken, and TJ wants to backtrack: he doesn’t want to be the one to put _that_ look on Steve’s face. But he knows he has to plow on. He knows, and he hates it.

He wonders, briefly, if this is how his family felt every time they have called him out. If this is how Doug felt every time he has thrown TJ’s bullshit back in his face.

“You wanna tell me why?” TJ asks, and to his own surprise he sounds calm and cool and collected. He has no idea how that’s possible, considering the knots in his stomach and the swirling in his chest and the racing of thoughts in his head.

Steve hesitates. For a moment, TJ thinks he’s going to hit another wall, but eventually, Steve gives his fingers a squeeze and takes a deep breath.

“They were starting to bring up…stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?” TJ has a feeling he may know the answer, but he doesn’t dare to interrupt Steve’s newfound momentum.

“Stuff from the war,” Steve says. “Stuff that’s best left buried.”

He’s not looking at TJ anymore. He’s staring down and ahead, and TJ may not have fought in a war, but he knows that gaze. He’s worn it himself. He still wears it at times.

He squeezes Steve’s fingers again and settles his other hand on Steve’s arm, firm enough to command attention and pull Steve back to the 21st century.

“That stuff is gonna bury _you_ if you keep on like this.” He can feel Steve tense under his palm, and when Steve’s gaze remains firmly fixed upon the floor, TJ tightens his hold. “Steve. Look at me.”

Steve does. He looks a little lost, but there’s already that steely determination creeping back into his stare, rising like a wall between the two of them. TJ is not going to let it win. Not this time.

“You can’t keep shoving it down. It’s gonna climb back up every time.”

There’s a glint in Steve’s eyes that says, _“Watch me.”_

“I’m okay, TJ.”

“No,” TJ says, and he can hear the snap in his own voice. He’s done. He’s _so done_ letting their respective demons push them around. “You’re not okay. You have PTSD, and we have to—”

He cuts off then, because Steve looks like he’s just been struck by lightning. His eyes are a little wide and his skin is a little pale, and he’s looking at TJ like he was born deaf and is hearing TJ’s voice for the first time.

TJ knows that look—it’s the look of realization. It hits him almost as hard as it has hit Steve, and for a moment everything is dead-quiet as Steve absorbs the shock and TJ can’t breathe.

Finally, somehow, TJ finds just enough air to speak. “Oh, God. You didn’t…” He clears his throat, but it does nothing; his voice remains a scratchy shadow of itself. “You never realized, did you?”

The thing about Steve is, he’s larger than life. He always looks like he knows exactly what to do, no matter the circumstances. But not right now. Right now, he looks lost and small despite his considerable stature.

“Do you really think I have PTSD?”

It’s an actual question. TJ is hit with the sudden realization that people in the ‘40s had no clue PTSD even existed. Sure, there was the term “shellshock,” but that was for those soldiers who spent their days trapped in their own head once they came back. There was no word for those whose traumas still allowed them to function. There was no word for Steve’s sleepless nights and daylight flashbacks. No definition for the split knuckles and the tension constantly thrumming underneath Steve’s skin.

No wonder the man has never stopped to consider he may have more in common with the men and women at the VA than just a war story.

“Yes, Steve,” TJ says, as gently as he can. He purposely catches Steve’s gaze and holds it, anchoring him as best and as firmly as he can. “I think you do. And I think we need to deal with it.”

“How?”

A steely glint is already returning to Steve’s blue eyes, the practical determination of a man who’s been presented with a problem and is going to make a mission out of solving it.

God, TJ loves him so much.

“How about you go back to the VA meetings, for starters? We’ll ask Sam about the rest, see if he can recommend a course of action.”

Steve nods once, sharp and short. Like a soldier on the battlefield. “Okay.”

TJ searches his face. He expected a fight. “Okay?”

“Okay.” Steve smiles, and it’s kind and open as always. Something in the pit of TJ’s stomach jumps and melts. “I trust you. If you say I need help, then I need help.”

TJ stares at him with what he’s sure is an absolutely appalled expression on his face. His head is spinning with thoughts too fast for him to catch up with. How is this so easy for Steve to admit? How can he just say “okay” and face it all head-on, when it took TJ years to even begin to acknowledge he had a problem?

And if Steve has to trust anyone’s word on this, why and _how in the hell_ would he trust TJ’s? Why would he think of TJ as a reliable source when it comes to coping mechanisms and working through one’s bullshit?

What has TJ ever done to deserve this kind of unshakable, utterly misplaced faith?

How is Steve so fucking brave and how is TJ such a fucking coward?

He grabs hold of his spiraling, runaway thoughts and flings them away and deep down, where they won’t be able to pull the focus from Steve and will cease the stabbing of his brain and heart, even for just a few moments.

“Do you get it now?” TJ asks, even though what he would really like an answer to is why Steve would trust _him_ , of all people. “Do you see why I want to keep you out of the utter shitshow that is a presidential campaign?”

“I can take it, TJ.”

God bless him. Even now, Steve believes he’s invincible.

“I know you can,” TJ says, because he believes Steve’s invincible too. Even now. “That’s not the point.”

Steve looks at him in confusion. “What’s the point, then?”

TJ gives a small smile. It’s almost endearing, the naivety of the unbroken. “The point is, I need you to focus on _you_ , and I don’t want you exposed while you do that.”

 _‘God knows,’_ TJ thinks with a shudder.

God knows they’ll latch on to any and every mannerism, dissect every look and word and syllable. God knows they’ll smell the blood and circle in like sharks. God knows sharks do not sleep.

TJ would rather dive back under the skin-burning, soul-sucking spotlight himself before he lets Steve do it. He’d rather give them all the blood in his veins before he lets them tear Steve apart.

“I don’t want you back in the grinder either,” Steve says after a moment.

“That won’t happen.” Even as TJ says it, he knows it’s not true. The press and the public and maybe even his mother will find a way. They always find a way.

“Maybe…” Steve trails off, and TJ’s eyes narrow in suspicion.

Steve’s got that look on his face that he gets every time a plan comes to him that he knows other people won’t like.

“What?” TJ presses warily.

“Maybe I could help you out, make just one appearance—”

“No,” TJ snaps. He’s growling. “Absolutely not.”

“Just hear me out,” Steve says, quick and firm, like he’s in a battle. “I’ll show up at just one event. That way, your mother will make her impact on the fanbase and go from there, and we don’t have to get involved any further. Everybody’s happy.”

“I’m not happy,” TJ says. He’s seething.

“It’s just one appearance, TJ.”

“I said no.”

“What’s the harm? If it can really help your mother’s cause and keep you out of the eye of cyclone… What’s so bad about Captain America making one appearance—”

“Oh, _fuck_ Captain America!”

TJ’s explosion startles them both, but the immobility barely lasts one split second: TJ is too fired up and too high strung. He practically shoots out of his seat and rounds back on Steve like he’s about to fight an army on his own. 

“I told you before, I’m gonna tell you again. I don’t give a rat’s ass about Captain America.”

Steve has somehow recovered from the shock enough to stand, and he’s towering and staring at TJ with a mixture of appalment and the hint of a glare in his blue eyes.

TJ steps closer and glares right back, eyes on fire. “ _Steve Rogers_ needs some time to figure out his own shit, so Captain America can fuck right off, right now.”

Steve blinks, utterly taken aback by the onslaught of swearwords. “I can still work through it _and_ fulfill my duty—”

“ _What_ duty, Steve?” TJ snaps, exasperated. Underneath the surface of his skin, his nerves are thrumming. “To whom? My mother? The Democrats? _What_?”

“I believe in your mom, TJ,” Steve says, the steel creeping back into his voice as he squares his shoulders and stands even taller. “I think she could do great things for this country. If I can help her swing some indecisive voters…”

TJ rolls his eyes. He can’t help it. He’s sick. He’s sick of everyone putting the country and the people and _politics_ before the things that matter. “My mom will be fine, I promise. She doesn’t need a publicity stunt. ‘Cause that’s what you’d be, you know.” He’s being harsh, but he needs Steve to see. There is no sugarcoating in politics. There is no sugarcoating in the Hammonds’ world.

“I’ve been one before.” Steve juts his chin out, proud and stubborn and _so_ _idiotic_. TJ wants to kiss him until they both forget how to breathe.

“And I won’t let you do it again,” he says instead, stepping closer still. “I’m sorry, Steve. I won’t. Not for me, not for my mother, not for the Country. It’s not happening. Especially not now, when you’re getting worse.”

Steve's resolve falters slightly to be replaced with confusion. “What are you talking about?”

 _Jesus Christ_. TJ is suddenly torn between the desire for a very stiff drink and the urge to bang his head against a wall.

“I’m talking about your PTSD.”

He waits for a reaction, but there isn’t any. Steve just keeps on staring, his face a mask of stoicism. Damn military training.

TJ rubs his forehead with the heel of his hand. He’s tired and headachy, and he just wants this conversation to be over. He forces himself to push through instead.

“You think I haven’t noticed you blowing through five heavy bags a night when you can’t sleep? You think I can’t feel all the extra tension in your body?” He steps closer and grasps Steve’s shoulder, squeezes it as though he could squeeze the demons out of the hard muscles. “You think I don’t know?”

Steve swallows visibly. “TJ—”

“No,” TJ says, and he sounds tired to his own ears, but resolute. “It’ll be okay, we’ll work this out. But while we do, I’m not exposing you to a campaign. Not even for one appearance.” He gives a small, self-deprecating smile that is just a crack in the window looking over everything that is going on inside him. “Trust me, I know what that does to someone who’s already having a hard time.”

Steve sighs heavily. He’s not done fighting yet, but his resolve seems to diminish. “TJ—”

“No,” TJ says again, quieter this time, but just as determined. “I’m serious, Steve. Leave Captain America out of this, I gotta help my boyfriend.” He reaches out and cups the back of Steve’s neck with a hand, fingertips digging into the knots he can feel there. “Okay?”

Steve all but melts under his touch. TJ can feel the moment when high-strung muscles relent and let go, and he knows then that the first battle has been won.

Steve brings their foreheads together and breathes quiet and soft. He nods against TJ’s temple. “Okay.”

TJ thinks “okay” may just be his new favorite word.

 


	5. Brother

_When I think of you and me and recall some_

_adolescent sunrise, standing on rooftops._

_We cannot be excused from this_

_device of road and harrow, from this weight_

_we heft and heave. So, you will be the brother._

_And I will be the brother._  


— _On Speaking Quietly with My Brother_ , Jay Deshpande

 

 

To say it’s going smoothly would be a lie. It’s…going. Steve has been trying to compare this experience to other obstacles he’s had to deal with over the years, other wars he’s had to fight—there have been plenty of those, after all. Yet, one month and eight days into it (he’s not counting, but TJ is), he still comes up blank when trying to find anything that fits the description. There aren’t words, they haven’t been invented.

Sam insists that they have, says that Steve needs to work on articulating what it’s like for him, but Steve can’t bring himself to do it. It feels selfish to take the focus off all those soldiers at the VA and bring it upon himself, as if the world didn’t focus enough on Captain America. And where would he even start? People didn’t talk about such things back in his day. Steve himself has gotten to where he is now thanks to a strict “suck-it-up-and-push-through” philosophy. This isn’t his territory.

He resists as long as he can, until one evening TJ cracks the code.

“You wanna be a regular person, you gotta share like a regular person,” TJ says as they sit at the island in his kitchen eating lasagna. Steve loves the casual way with which TJ treats his PTSD, how he makes it into a topic for dinner conversation, how he handles it with respect and consideration but never adds weight to it unless Steve initiates it. It’s an incredibly respectful way to deal with the subject, and one more thing Steve cannot put into words is just how grateful he is. “You’re only setting yourself further apart if you don’t join them.”

Steve stares at him. It makes perfect sense, but he still can’t wrap his head around it.

“Look,” TJ says, and there’s an understanding in his eyes as if he were reading Steve’s mind, “I get it. My reasons were a lot less noble than yours, but I didn’t exactly want the attention on me either. It took almost two months before I finally spoke up during one of the meetings.”

“What made you do it?”

TJ shrugs as he shoves another forkful of lasagna into his mouth. “I don’t know. One day it just…came out. I was sitting there listening to other people talk and I just felt this need to say it all out loud too, you know?”

Steve doesn’t. He can’t say he feels such a need himself, but he does take TJ’s words to heart.

And one day, finally, he speaks.

He talks about fighting tooth and nail and nerves and heart in the ‘40s, and waking up 70 years later to find that everything and everyone he had fought for had left him behind. He talks about the unfamiliarity of it all and the earth-shattering, alienating feeling of non-belonging in a place he used to call home. He talks about that _thing_ (whatever _it_ is) that crawls under his skin and knots up his belly.

He doesn’t talk about drowning, not yet, but he thinks he’s talked enough for one day.

Afterward, he feels shaky and out of sorts but strangely liberated, like something has shifted. Sam texts him to congratulate him on a “breakthrough” (whatever _that_ means) not fifteen minutes after Steve’s left the place. He has no doubt been alerted by Gary, who hosts the VA meetings Steve goes to (something about a “conflict of interests” no longer allows him to attend Sam’s meetings).

Steve doesn’t really feel like he “broke through” anything, but he supposes he’ll take the professionals’ word for it.

He doesn’t make the choice consciously. It’s as if his bike has a mind of its own and makes the choice for him. He remembers, distantly, thinking that he only wanted to go home and close the door on the world for an hour or two, and next thing he knows, he’s pulling up in front of TJ’s building. He should probably pause to consider the fact that his subconscious has come to associate “home” with TJ’s apartment, but he thinks he’s worked through enough stuff for one day.

When he gets upstairs, TJ is playing. Steve pauses outside the front door and listens. He has learned to guess TJ’s mood not only by what he plays, but also by how he plays it. TJ says no one else has ever been able to do it, and Steve wonders how that’s possible: TJ _talks_ when he plays. How can no one else tell? Sometimes the touch of TJ’s fingers on the keys will be so expressive that Steve feels like he can read his thoughts.

The piece TJ is playing now is unknown to him, but the way it’s being played isn’t. TJ is playing aggressively, almost violently, the notes and chords cascading in the air in a frenzied crescendo. Steve swallows. This isn’t good: this is TJ about to explode.

He lets himself in with the spare key TJ had made for him months ago and follows the angry sounds to the den. TJ’s got his back to him, and Steve can see the tension down to his shoulder blades as the muscles jerk and jump under too-sharp movements.

The TV is on. Steve casts a look at it and his stomach drops. A small rectangle at the top left corner of the screen shows Elaine talking to a gathering in Philadelphia, while the CNN anchor comments on it on the larger picture. Then the smaller box changes to a picture of TJ. Steve can’t make out what the anchor is saying: TJ is playing too loudly, most likely on purpose. He picks up the remote from the coffee table and turns the TV off just as he thinks he catches the words “suicide attempt.” A cold shiver runs down his spine.

TJ stops playing. He turns around and breaks into a smile as soon as he registers Steve’s presence. Steve loves him for it, even though he can see the tension in the lines of his face. When he walks up to sit next to him on the piano stool, he also notices a hint of shadows under TJ’s eyes. His stomach tightens uncomfortably. Steve has spent the past couple of nights at S.H.I.E.L.D. for pre-dawn briefings and at-dawn training of young agents, and he hates the obvious signs that TJ hasn’t been sleeping.

“Hey,” he says, and he reaches out to frame TJ’s face between his palms.

“Hey.” TJ’s kiss is deep and somewhat desperate, and when they pull apart, he touches his forehead to Steve’s and sits still and quiet for a few moments, just breathing, as though he’s anchoring himself.

“You okay?” Steve asks when TJ finally pulls back and sits up straight.

TJ flashes him a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Yeah.”

Something in the pit of Steve’s stomach curls up in even tighter knots. He wasn’t around for the first campaign, and even though TJ did warn him, he wasn't quite sure what to expect. Now they’re a little over a month in, and he already hates it. He hates what it’s doing to TJ, even though so far he has miraculously managed to stay mostly out of it.

“How was it today?” TJ asks.

He never specifies, never spells it out. It gives Steve a way out, a chance to pretend “it” is something else (his day in general, or his work, or breakfast with Natasha), in case he doesn’t want to talk about it. Steve loves him so much he can barely handle it.

“It went well, I think.” The thing is, he’s still trying to decide whether or not what happened was progress, and if so, to which extent. “I shared.”

TJ does a double-take, eyes wide and huge in his too-pale face. “You did?”

“I did.”

And TJ lights up. His whole body relaxes, shoulders letting go of that godawful tension, blue eyes taking on a bright glint, a smile breaking out so wide it seems to take up his whole face. It’s like watching dawn come over Brooklyn, like _home_ , and Steve starts to understand why his bike took him here.

“I’m so proud of you.” TJ leans in and kisses him again, and this time it’s soft and supporting, and Steve could lose himself in it for hours. “How did it feel?”

Steve shrugs, because isn’t _that_ the million-dollar question. “I don’t know,” he admits. “I’m still trying to decide.”

TJ nods. “I understand.”

Steve knows he truly does, and he’s grateful beyond belief.

“We should celebrate,” TJ announces with another quick kiss to Steve’s lips. “I’ll make dinner.”

Steve arches an eyebrow. “TJ, you can’t cook.”

TJ makes an affronted sound. “Excuse me, I seem to recall you loving my pancakes.”

“Yeah, you’re good with breakfast food, but that’s about it.”

“Then I’ll make breakfast food. French toast and bacon sound good?”

“You know what sounds good?” Steve says, utterly and completely unable to help himself. “You.”

The look on TJ’s face goes from questioning to devilishly delighted. “Captain! I’ll say!”

Steve drinks it up—the mock indignation in TJ’s voice, the abuse of a title that stopped meaning anything the moment he woke up into a future that doesn’t belong to him, the eager twinkle that turns TJ’s blue eyes just one shade darker.

And then TJ is grabbing the front of his t-shirt and pulling him in, slow and languid and seductive. Steve feels the touch of TJ’s tongue on his own all the way down to his stomach. TJ’s hands are swift and efficient as they pull the leather jacket off his shoulders and let it fall to the floor. TJ wraps one arm around Steve’s waist and tugs him impossibly close, their bodies flush together and their mouths glued to one another.

“I love you,” TJ says between kisses, “so much. I want you,” his mouth slides along Steve’s jaw and finds the side of his neck, “all the time.”

Steve shivers, and for once it’s not from memories of the ice. He wants to say it back. He wants to say that he loves TJ too, so much he actually can’t put it into words, and that he wants him more than he’s ever wanted anything. He wants to tell TJ he needs him—in that desperate, all-consuming way he used to need a healthy set of lungs and a strong body. But his voice is lost somewhere in the depths of his throat, and he can’t for the life of him drag it up to the surface.

His hands move as if on their own accord, sliding down TJ’s chest and finding the zipper of his jeans, fumbling to get it down and open.

And that’s when the knocking comes. It’s soft enough at first, but it becomes insistent fast.

TJ groans into his mouth and chases his lips hungrily when Steve pulls away.

“TJ,” Steve mumbles against TJ’s mouth. “The door.”

“Leave it.”

The knocking comes again, loud and banging and urgent.

“TJ.”

“Fine.” TJ huffs and pulls back, lips swollen and eyes stormy. It takes Steve all of his resolve not to follow the suggestion and ignore the noise at the front door.

TJ is still zipping up his pants when he throws the door open without even taking the time to check through the peephole. Steve wants to point out the recklessness of it, but he’s too busy staring in astonishment as Douglas Hammond stumbles through the doorway, looking flushed and slightly disheveled, tie askew and eyes a little too wild.

“What took you so long?”

 

* * *

 

There have been enough times when he’s barged in on Douglas and Anne, TJ has to wonder if this is payback. If this is what it was like for his brother, then he feels all the more guilty about it. He can feel Steve’s presence hovering behind him in the background, and it’s as if there was an energy pulling him backward. He can still feel Steve’s touch lingering on his skin, and he wants nothing more than to crawl back into his Captain’s arms and make crazy love to him right there on the den’s floor, next to his piano.

Instead, he finishes buttoning his pants and glares at his brother.

“What are you doing here?” he demands. “Aren’t you supposed to be at the Hill?”

It’s eight o’clock in the evening. There is simply _no way_ Douglas is done with his workday already, not during a presidential campaign.

“I snuck out.”

TJ blinks. “You _snuck out_?”

“I took a few hours,” Douglas elaborates. “Without Mom knowing. It’s fine, don’t look at me like that. I’m sure Elaine Barrish’s office will not implode just because I’m taking a night off.”

TJ looks at his brother, _really_ looks at him, and as sudden realization hits, he’s torn between amusement and absolute horror. “Are you _drunk_?”

Douglas shrugs. “A little.” He takes a step further into the apartment and stumbles.

TJ catches him with the readiness of one used to this kind of mess, although to be fair, he’s usually the mess. “Jesus, Dougie.”

“Oh, like you’ve never shown up drunk at my doorstep before.”

TJ goes rigid, and so does Douglas.

“Fuck,” he mutters under his breath. “I’m sorry, TJ. I didn’t mean it.”

“I know,” TJ says, and he does. He pushes the hurt away and guides his brother over to the couch. He sits down on the coffee table and stares at his twin. “What the hell happened? This isn’t like you.”

“They set you up.”

Ice spreads down TJ’s spine and through his belly so fast that he almost gasps from it. Worst-case scenarios from the past are running through his head at record speed. They’ve outed him again, somehow. They’ve found something, some indiscretion from his past that they hadn’t sunk their claws in yet. They’re exposing Steve, in whatever way Steve can be exposed more than he already is.

The meetings. Someone has pictures of Steve attending a VA meeting and there’s going to be titles about Captain America struggling with PTSD in all the major newspapers come morning.

There’s a touch on his shoulder, and he looks up to see Steve standing over him. “What do you mean, Douglas?” Steve speaks quietly, but there’s a steely undertone to his voice that demands an answer. This is the commander all over again, getting ready for the battlefield. TJ wants to throw up.

“That…that _weasel_ , Jenkins—” Douglas cuts off and narrows his eyes at the both of them. “Oh, shit. You guys were having sex, weren’t you? I interrupted.”

Steve makes a strangled sound of pure horror and frantically runs his hands down his t-shirt in a desperate attempt to smooth out the telltale creases.

 _‘Adorable.’_ TJ wants to jump him right there and then.

Instead, he rolls his eyes at his brother. “Dougie,” he snaps. “Focus.”

“Fuck. I’m sorry, TJ. I’ll come back later—”

“Sit your ass down.” TJ grabs his brother’s wrist and yanks him back down when Douglas makes a move to stand. “What do you mean, they set me up? What shameful story that will bring dishonor to the family is about to come out this time?”

“The Washington Globe,” Douglas says, like that explains everything.

TJ waits for him to continue, but Doug only keeps on staring at him expectantly.

TJ runs both hands over his face. His brother has always been the emotional and slow kind of drunk. “I need you to start making sense _right now_ , Douglas.”

“Right.” Doug nods as if to himself. “That _weasel_ , Jenkins, has set up a profile interview with the Washington Globe. _Without consulting me._ ”

TJ has the feeling he’s not going to like what comes next. “A profile on whom?”

“Us. You and me.”

He wants to get mad. He wants to scream and curse and tell Douglas that no way, _no way_ he’s going to do this. But Doug looks so crestfallen and devastated already that TJ can’t bring himself to kick his brother when he’s so obviously down.

“What the fuck, Dougie,” he says instead, with a calm in his voice that he’s miles from feeling.

“I didn’t know, TJ,” Doug says, speaking quickly, his eyes wide and pleading. “I swear I didn’t. I told them to shove it, that we’re not doing it.”

TJ stares at his brother in shock. “I’m sorry, you _what_?”

“I’m gonna get him some water,” Steve says, giving TJ’s shoulder a squeeze.

TJ shoots him a grateful look and then turns his attention back to his brother. Dougie looks… _fuck_ , he looks wrecked.

“I told them it’s not happening,” Doug says again. “I’m not doing that to you.’

TJ’s brain is working a mile a minute. They have to do it. It’s too late to back out now. If TJ doesn’t show up, it will look like the family is hiding him away, like he’s not fit to be seen in public. If Doug doesn’t do it, he will look weak and raise suspicions that he, too, may have something to hide.

TJ can’t let him take that risk.

“It’s all right, Dougie,” he hears himself say. Every fiber of his being is screaming at him to not utter the next words, to backtrack while he still can, keep himself safe and sheltered for once. But he knows there’s no such thing as “sheltered” during a presidential campaign; he’s been fooling himself to even begin to think he might escape it. “Call them back. Tell them we’ll be there.”

Doug is shaking his head even before TJ has reached the end of his sentence. “TJ, I can’t…they’re gonna _hound_ you.”

“Yeah, well.” TJ smiles. “What else is new?”

Doug stares at him, and TJ can see his resolve crumbling. “But—”

“Look, you want Mom to win, don’t you?”

Doug hesitates, uncertain. “Yeah, but—”

“So do I,” TJ says, even though it pains him to admit it out loud. “And I want you to succeed in this crazy career of yours, as much as I don’t get it. So we’re doing this.”

To TJ’s surprise and horror, Douglas’ eyes fill with tears. “Politics aren’t worth shattering everything you’ve worked for over the past year,” he says, and his voice is rough and unsteady. “I don’t give a fuck about my career if it means jeopardizing you. I want you to be safe.”

 _I want you to be healthy_ , is what they both hear, even though it isn’t spoken out loud.

TJ’s heart cracks. “Hey,” he says firmly, reaching out to give his brother’s arm a grounding squeeze. “Nothing’s getting shattered here, all right? _I’m_ not getting shattered. How could I? Have you seen my boyfriend?” He grins playfully, and is relieved when that gets a choked laugh out of Dougie. “C’mere.”

He moves to the couch next to Douglas and pulls his brother to his chest, and Doug goes willingly. He’s boneless and heavy, and TJ wraps his arms around him and holds on tight. “It’s okay. It’s gonna be all right. I’ll be fine, I promise. You’ll be fine.”

There’s a suspicious sniff coming from somewhere near the crook of his neck, but TJ doesn’t call his brother on it. He just holds on tighter and silently and vehemently curses the White House, the Hill, his parents, and all of D.C.


	6. Bullets

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) Apologies for the long time it's taken me to finally update this story. Life has been a bit of a whirlwind, but it appears to have settled, so you can expect more timely updates from now on. For real this time. ;) Massive thanks to everyone who's been reading and commenting! <3 
> 
> 2) IMPORTANT: You can find the video that inspired this chapter's interview [HERE](http://captaincentenarian.tumblr.com/post/170737716527/uncensoredsideblog-the-washington-globe-a). Please watch to better understand this part.

_Beethoven was deaf. Goya too. There were_

_monsters in their heads that drove them mad. All_

_the dazzling darkness of the deaf._

_His brother got rid of the gun. And him? He wound_

_up with the bullets._

_Goya would have known what to do with_

_the bullets. Beethoven too._

— _The Last Cigarette on Earth_ , Benjamin Alire Sáenz 

 

“Remember, you’ve got this.”

There must be one hundred different things TJ feels about this interview, but “having it” is not one of them.

The lights in the studios are too bright. Everything is either white or sleek silver. It feels sterile and inquisitive, like he’s about to enter a lab to be poked and prodded and examined from way too close—which is exactly what is about to happen. There’s too many people coming and going, running around like ants as they set the stage for the Hammond twins to spill all their secrets and reveal every fragility. TJ can see it in their faces and read it in their eyes, how hungry they are for a misstep.

Then again, maybe he’s just being paranoid. The sounds are grating on his skin, as are the anxious looks Douglas is throwing at him when he thinks he’s not looking. TJ can feel his brother’s tension as if it were his own, and it adds to the restlessness already crawling all over him like live worms. The fact that Doug’s unease is _for_ him as well as caused by TJ himself, by the way he has handled this sort of thing in the past, only piles onto everything.

TJ knows he shouldn’t be here, just as he knows he did not have a choice. Not for the first time, he wonders if he’s ever going to have any say in the matter when it comes to being thrown smack in the middle of politics he wants nothing to do with. Was he just being naïve when he thought he could stay out of it, or is there the faintest glimmer of hope that one day he’ll succeed in removing himself from the limelight?

Tony straightens the collar of his jacket for him with sharp, precise movements, and TJ looks at him uncertainly. He’s suddenly taken back to the last time someone with more expertise fixed his collar for him and gave him advice, almost two years ago, just before he walked out of the hospital with his head refusing to be held high no matter his efforts. He wants to be anywhere else but here—preferably at home, with Steve.

Steve who, while supportive, was clearly less-than-thrilled with TJ’s decision to subject himself to the public grinder. Steve who is probably sitting on the couch in his own apartment right now, watching this like one watches a car crash—with morbid fascination and a mounting sense of horror.

Except that TJ is not going to crash this time. He’s not going to give them the satisfaction.

“He’ll be watching,” he hears himself blurt out under his breath anyway.

Tony frowns. “Who?”

“Steve. He’ll be watching. I can’t fuck this up.”

“That’s right, you can’t. And you won’t.” Tony slaps both his shoulders energetically. “You’ve been coached by the best, after all. I’ve got you.”

TJ swallows. It feels like he’s swallowing gravel. His heart is pounding: he can feel the near-frantic beat in his ears.

“TJ?”

His name is being called as if from underwater.

_“What did it feel like to be outed against your will?”_

_“Substance abuse has plagued you since you were a teen at the White House.”_

_“Were drugs behind the suicide attempt last year?”_

“TJ?”

“I can’t…”

TJ gets tunnel vision. He’s not even sure what he’s seeing, what it is that he’s tunneling in on—if his future as an unwilling pawn in a game he doesn’t want to play, stuck in the golden cage that has been his life ever since his father was elected President of the United States, or his past as an American punchline. The two are colliding in his head, and he doesn’t like what they look like when they are fused together.

Everything is swirling around him. The only certainty he has is that no matter what he does or doesn’t do, no matter what he does or does not say, he’s doomed. The people in these studios are not going to let him redeem himself.

Damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t.

“TJ. Hey! Come on, don’t do this. Don’t do this to me. Come on. Come on, Wonder Boy. Let’s sit down.”

Tony’s voice registers as if from a great distance, and as he feels himself being lowered into a chair, TJ shakes his head. There was a time when the nickname Tony has coined for him used to fill his stomach with an odd sensation of warmth, but right now TJ can’t bear to hear it. It’s wrong. Tony’s got it all wrong. There’s nothing wonderful or wonder-worthy about him. No matter the common traits in their backgrounds, TJ is no Tony Stark. He’s no Iron Man.

“TJ.”

“I can’t do this…I can’t do this again…”

_“I’ve got a life, a career. I’m not some pathetic American punchline.”_

“TJ.”

There’s a sharp sound, somewhere between a grunt and a gasp. It takes TJ a second to realize (distantly, as though it were happening to someone else) that it’s coming from him.

_“This ‘life’ of yours or whatever you wanna call it... It may be okay for you, but I want more.”_

Oh God. Sean was right. They’re not going to be interested in his life, how he has picked himself up and made something of himself. They’re going to ask about the drugs, and they’re going to ask about Steve, and he’s going to say something stupid that will be distorted and taken out of context and blown out of proportions in some spectacular fashion. And he’s going to drag Steve down with him.

“Steve…”

He’d told him. _Goddamnit,_ TJ told him. At the very beginning, he had warned Steve that he should stay away. He told him the baggage would be heavy, the exposure endless, the unwanted attention inescapable. He told him how hopeless he was at handling it all—how he was clumsy and angry on his best days, and how he did not give a fuck on his worst ones. How on the worst days, he didn’t even try, snarling in the face of the media like the caged animal he sometimes felt himself to be, consequences be damned. 

TJ told him how one day, he would only end up damaging Steve’s image along with his own. He was just _that_ incapable.

But Steve hadn’t listened, and now TJ knows the time has come when Captain America crashes and burns in the Nation’s eyes because of him.

“Steve…” He chokes out the word, because choking is all he can seem to do at the moment and Steve’s name is the only thing in his jumbled thoughts that makes sense.

“You want me to call him?” Tony offers. “‘Cause I can have him on the phone in a jiffy, just say the word.”

TJ’s panic, already in the dangerously-high levels, skyrockets at record speed. “NO!”

“Okay,” Tony says quickly. His hands descend on his shoulders and squeeze—a grounding touch that TJ clings to like the drowning man that he is. “It’s okay. Just breathe for me, okay? You’re doing fine, TJ."

TJ manages to let out a strangled laugh.

“All right, so you’re not doing great,” Tony concedes. “Could be worse.”

Tony’s litany of nonsense eventually lulls TJ back to the present. He blinks when he realizes Tony is now crouched in front of him, a concerned expression on his usually unflappable features.

“You back with me?”

TJ nods. It’s only half a lie: he feels shaky and uncertain, but he’s back. A glass of water materializes in his hand a moment later, and he gulps it down greedily. It’s ice cold, just as he likes it, and he welcomes the freeze sliding down his throat and into his belly, waking him up and clearing his head.

“TJ?”

_‘Fuck.’_

He has just started to regain his bearings when his brother’s voice sounds from somewhere to his left.

Doug looks worried and unsure. Doug, who usually treats media appearances with a breezy confidence TJ has no idea how to even begin faking, much less actually find within himself.

“What?” TJ says, and it comes out just a little more barked than he intended.

_‘Fuck.’_

Doug sighs. He’s now somehow standing right in front of him, close enough that TJ can feel the nervous vibes radiate off his brother like warmth from an electric heater.

“You can go home, you know? If you want. I can do it by myself. In fact, that’s what we should do. I should’ve never let you agree to this. I knew it was a bad idea.”

TJ wants to tell him to shut up. So he does.

He says, “Shut up, Dougie.” And then he makes the mistake of looking up at his brother.

Doug is staring down at him with a combination of concern and guilt written all over his face, mixed in with a hint of pity that TJ is not entirely sure he’s imagining.

In that moment, TJ hates him a little.

“I’m fine, okay? It was just a minor freakout. Better in here than out there.” He jerks his head in the general direction of the stage and gives a grin.

It’s an old tactic, well-tested and proven to be successful on most of his battlefields in the past, a winning combination of _deflect deflect deflect_ and _downplay downplay downplay_ that has led to numerous victories that have tasted like defeat on his tongue and coke on his gums.

Doug looks unconvinced. “I just don’t think—”

“Enough, Dougie,” TJ says, and he can hear the steel in his own voice. It only gives him a small pang of satisfaction when his brother snaps his mouth shut. “I’m good.”

It’s all too clear that Doug doesn’t believe him.

If Tony doesn’t either, he still pretends like he does.

 

* * *

 

The profiles are being done in parallels. TJ is on one stage and Doug on another. They can’t hear what the other is saying, but all of Dougie’s uncertainty has dropped off of him like an ill-fitting coat. He looks relaxed and comfortable as he sits on a chair at the center of his platform. He only allows himself one moment of fidgeting before he begins, taking out his phone and checking god-knows-what priority e-mail on the screen. But then the phone is gone and Dougie is Douglas Hammond, all competence and charm.

TJ is both appalled at his brother’s chameleon skills and relieved that he’ll only have himself to worry about for the time being. He shoots a look to where Tony is standing a way away with his tall posture and sharp eyes, and he’s immediately rewarded with an encouraging wink. He makes a mental note to buy Tony Stark all the top-notch, last-generation mechanical tools the man’s arc reactor heart could desire.

The journalist who comes to sit in front of him is sharply dressed in a charcoal-gray vest suit and thick black glasses. His equally black hair is artfully messy, and his brown eyes are big and laser-sharp behind the lenses. He must be in his mid-forties, and TJ would be attracted if not for the fact that this man, this reporter, is the enemy. In TJ’s mind, no matter how he tries to spin the tale, this man (Richard Clarke, as he’s introduced himself earlier on behind the scenes) is the media. TJ has read some of this guy’s articles in the past. They were more objective than most and were not, surprisingly enough, tinged with vitriol, but still…TJ is wary. He doesn’t quite know where this guy stands.

“Ready?” Mr. Clarke asks, flashing a dimpled smile.

TJ nods. “Might as well,” he says with an easy shrug, finding a charming smile from somewhere within himself, half-hidden behind the fear and the anger.

The camera rolls, and just like that, they’re live. America’s watching. And so is Steve, somewhere out there. TJ takes an inner breath and swears to himself he'll make his boyfriend proud—or at the very least keep him out of trouble.

“Thanks so much for coming out, TJ,” the journalist begins.

TJ’s hands are in his lap, fingers intertwined. He bounces them up and down his knee, aware of the jittery energy he’s giving off and yet unable to morph it into something steadier.

“I could probably think of a million other places to be right now, to be quite honest,” he hears himself say as if from a distance. Because he can see it. He can see the glint in Clarke’s eyes, shark-like and calculating, and _fuck him_. Fuck Richard Clarke and The Washington Globe very, _very_ much.

Or maybe he’s just being paranoid. _‘Get a grip, TJ.’_ He takes a breath and forces himself to fight back in a non-destructive way. “But, you know…let’s make it interesting.” He grins, and he feels like his grin, too, is shark-like.

Clarke meets his eye with a smile of his own. “All right then, let’s get started. Your family has been in the limelight for most of your formative years. That mustn’t have been easy. Can you tell us what growing up as a boy in the White House was like for you?”

And _fuck_ , TJ can’t believe he’s leading with that. The sniveling son of a bitch. And _fine_ , TJ can play this game. He can play this game very well. The media has loved him and hated him for how well he can play.

“Do you really want to know about me growing up as a boy in the White House?” TJ says, eyebrows shooting up, throwing the full question back in the man’s face like a challenge.

He can feel a sureness of posture seeping into his body. He’s being tested, and _oh_ , but he’s going to give them a run for their money. If they wanted polite responses and patriotic speeches, they should’ve gone to Doug. Or Steve. TJ is not going to give them that—and they know it.

Or maybe they were hoping he would, for once, because Clarke’s eyes widen slightly as TJ shifts his posture and sits up taller in his chair like a lion readying to pounce.

“Okay, so you’re challenging me, then,” TJ says, because damn if TJ Hammond isn’t going to call them out on their own bullshit. It’s the one thing he’s ever been good at.

“TJ, I assure you, I didn’t mean—”

“No, it’s cool.” TJ himself is now all smooth suaveness and glittering eyes. Because if they thought a year of music lessons and dating Captain America had gotten the venom out of his bite, they’ve got another thing coming. “I’ll tell you.” He meets Clarke’s inquisitive gaze straight on. “I know it’s the White House. That’s great. But it’s a _house_. Furniture, pictures…people that I don’t know that I’m supposed to respect. I get it. But it’s a _house_.”

 _‘Fuck you.’_ The sixteen-year-old within TJ snarls at Clarke. _‘Fuck you. You and your politics and your properness. It’s a_ house _. I was a_ kid _. I just wanted to be left alone. I just wanted to play my piano in peace and make my mistakes in private. Fuck you. George Washington’s dead and he’s nothing to me._ You’re _nothing to me._ Fuck you _.’_

“But surely you must’ve felt a sense of humbling while living there, an intimidating deference, whether you wanted to or not.”

Clarke _is_ challenging him.

TJ doesn’t miss a beat. “I got high the first time in the Lincoln Bedroom.”

For all of his detached professionalism, a look of horror crosses Clarke’s handsome features, just for a second. It gives TJ a stab of savage satisfaction.

“What gave you that idea?”

“Oh, you know…” TJ shrugs. “It’s the Lincoln Room, I guess. I don’t know. It seemed like a funny thing to do at the time.” He laughs and takes a sip from the coffee mug they’ve placed on the little table next to him. It’s carefree and flippant, and a casual observer wouldn’t catch the cutting tones underneath, the blade-sharp quality of his body language.

But Clarke is not casual, and TJ knows he catches it all. Which is precisely what TJ wants. He wants these people to know he’s not nearly as stupid as they think he is. They’ve spent most of his life provoking him: now he’s going to provoke back. He’s going to give them cutting-edge answers mixed in with the raw truth they’ve never really cared to hear from him.

“Honestly?” he says, sitting back as carelessly as if he were reclining on the couch in his own apartment. ( _'If only.’_ )“I was a kid whose dad had just gotten the most important job in the world. I know it’s the White House, I was always well aware. But I needed it to be something different. I was trying to make it a home any way I could, and that included smoking weed in a bedroom.”

“I think anyone would understand that,” Clarke says. And he’s good. The bastard is good: TJ almost believes him. “Just like anyone can understand how easy it would have been for that kind of situation to get a little out of hand.”

 _‘Here it comes.’_ TJ can feel an almost-feral grin tugging at the corners of his mouth, but he pushes it down and stares calmly at the journalist in front of him. “You mean the drugs?”

“Yes," Clarke says without missing a beat. “You ended up smack in the eye of the media and became known as the ‘party boy’ of the Hammond family. Was that a conscious choice, to build that kind of persona? Or was it something that just happened?”

TJ thinks he can detect a delicate note in the man’s voice, a genuine element of respect for the subject matter and for TJ himself. He wants so very badly to lean into it, but he can’t allow himself the luxury of letting his guard down. Still, he decides to reward that hint of honest human compassion with an honest answer.

“Like you said, temptations like those mixed in with circumstances like mine…things spiraled kind of quickly. I didn’t choose it, no. The weed took the edge off, and then the booze did, and then came the coke. It gave me confidence, helped me find that bubbly energy people wanted to see but that I didn’t really have, you know. I didn’t like the spotlight, but I had to be in it. Before I knew it, I was ‘Party Boy,’ as you said. It was an easier mask to wear than most, so I wore it.” He shrugs and takes another sip of coffee. It tastes bitter on his tongue, but he’s not sure whether that’s the arabica or the memories. “But you know, I’ve had my fun. I’m actually…I’m done with that kind of fun, I guess you could say. I’m way more responsible these days.” He’d meant for it to come off as light-hearted, a little coda to temper the heaviness of the previous statements, but it comes out just as heavy. Just as solemn. He wishes he could look Steve in the eye right now and renew his promises:  _I’m done. It’s done. I’m sober. I’m here. I’m really here._

The words get stuck in his throat. He wants to move on from the subject, but at the same time, _something_ within him is stirring. Something that’s telling him that he can speak now. He’s safe now, somehow. He can let them know.

“Yeah, I have a problem. We all have problems, but…mine were public domain. That doesn’t mean they have to define me.”

And there it is, the core of everything. TJ is tired. He’s so tired of being defined by other people. It’s been like that ever since he can remember, and he’s done. He’s _so_ done.

“If you don’t mind me saying,” Clarke says after the first beat he’s taken ever since this conversation has started, “you seem a lot more centered these days.”

“I don’t mind you saying,” TJ says, because _fucking finally_. “I don’t mind you saying at all.” He can’t help the small smile that comes to his lips as he takes yet another sip of coffee, thoughts straying toward the one thing in his life that has helped him find and keep that center.

Clarke returns the expression, and that too seems genuine. “All right, TJ. Now I’ve got to move on to the uncomfortable questions.”

TJ laughs, feeling the knots in his stomach finally starting to untangle. “ _That_ was not the uncomfortable part?” He’s charming. He’s confident. He’s giving them what they didn’t even know they wanted—the good TJ. The TJ who doesn’t screw up.

Clarke chuckles, playing along. “I’m afraid not.” He takes an overdramatic pause. “You’re dating Captain America. What’s _that_ like? Inquiring minds want to know.”

TJ doesn’t sigh. He doesn’t curse. He doesn’t clam up. He was expecting this. Tony’s made him rehearse for this. He’s ready. He gives a grin that he’s not sure doesn’t contain a hint of honest-to-god lovesickness. “He’s as dreamy as you may imagine, Richard.”

The man laughs, and it sounds real enough that TJ thinks that maybe, just maybe, this won’t be a disaster after all. “I’m sure. Did he help you with your drug addiction?”

No pause. Not even the smallest of beats. TJ feels cold starting to spread through his belly, and he hopes his expression doesn’t freeze on his face in response. He hopes they can’t see it from the outside.

“Yes,” he says sincerely, because there’s no way in hell he’s ever going to deny that. “He did.”

“Some people say he ‘set you straight.’”

“Some people may be wrong, considering that we’re dating.” It's an easy joke to make, but TJ isn’t laughing. He can hear the detached tone creep into his voice. _‘No no no.’_ It was going so well. He was doing so good.

Richard Clarke isn't laughing either. Instead, the journalist searches TJ's face with those expert eyes of his, and TJ feels naked and raw and exposed.

“Would you say he’s your support system?”

“I would, yes. He’s the pillar of it.”

Clarke nods solemnly. He looks so much like a shark, TJ wonders if the man can smell the blood of his newfound vulnerability.

“When was the last time you used, TJ?”

TJ stiffens. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Tony doing the very same in the background. “I don’t see how that’s relevant.”

“You’ve pulled yourself up in a spectacular fashion,” the reporter remarks, but it doesn’t feel like a compliment. “But some say it’s just an act. Would you care to shut them up?”

“No,” TJ all but growls. “I would not. I don’t think it’s anyone’s business.”

“But you’re clean, yes?”

“Yes.”

“You say your problems have been public domain. I can’t imagine what that must be like. I'd like to bring the human aspect of this to the foreground, show that addiction _is_ indeed an illness and not so much a choice.”

There’s the rushing of blood in TJ’s ears. He wants to get out.

“I’ve made bad choices,” he manages to say, and he’s shocked to hear his voice is somewhat steady. “Those are on me.”

Clarke nods. “What can you tell us about your suicide attempt two years ago? And what about your overdose last year? Was that an accident?”

“What _bullshit_ is this?” Tony hisses from somewhere that TJ can’t bring himself to focus on.

The room is spinning. He swallows hard and reaches for the coffee mug. His hands shake as his fingers wrap around the ceramic and his knuckles turn white from the iron-like grip he’s now got on it. “Again,” he snarls through gritted teeth, “I don’t see how that’s relevant.”

“I’m just trying to show America how you’ve shed the persona we’d come to know. That you’ve really changed.”

“I don’t have to show America squat.” He can’t help it. He’s _done_. He really can’t do this after all.

“All right,” Clarke says in a smooth transition that grates on TJ’s skin like sandpaper. “Let’s get back to Steve Rogers, then. You say he’s helped you. It can’t have been easy for either of you. You say you wanted to get away from the spotlight, but dating Captain America is hardly inconspicuous, is it?”

“To me he’s just Steve.”

“Surely the two are inseparable.”

“Not to me, they aren’t.”

The journalist nods again. “He also must have his fair share of emotional baggage. How do you deal with that?”

“There’s nothing to ‘deal’ with. He’s just the man I love.”

“That’s not an answer, TJ.”

And that’s it. They’re _not_ coming for Steve. TJ won’t let them. He throws his head back and takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly through his nostrils. Then he levels Richard Clarke with a hard stare.

“We’re done here.”

And he stands up, ripping the mic off the front of his shirt and tossing it onto the chair. He takes the coffee with him.

Fuck them.

Fuck them all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IMPORTANT: You can find the video that inspired this chapter's interview [HERE](http://captaincentenarian.tumblr.com/post/170737716527/uncensoredsideblog-the-washington-globe-a). Please watch to better understand this part.


	7. Wreckage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It appears clear that, unless I give myself a deadline, I end up losing track of the posting frequency. So, without further ado, I hereby announce that this story will be updated every Friday.  
> Thank you, everyone, for reading and leaving kudos and comments! You make my day. <3 I hope you will enjoy this chapter.

_Your steps_

_send broken branching signals_

_Faultless as some harp-tuning_

_dedicated to silence: each note_

_Carries an interior candle of dissonance._

_There is a season deeper than winter_

_Passing in these_

_tree-diagrams, & mechanisms_

_Of common speech_

_Sleeping under the solstice, you may suffer_

_Recurrent dreams_

_as the wreckage returns its image._

 

 _— Boreal_ , Andrew Joron

 

“Our boy is doing good,” Sam says, exactly three minutes before everything goes to hell.

Steve sees it coming from miles away. He watches TJ get increasingly uncomfortable. It’s not obvious unless one is well versed in “TJ talk,” in that way that TJ has about him where the tiniest shift in his body language can communicate entire paragraphs, much like his playing does.

Steve is fluent, speaks TJ like he speaks good old American English, if not better—nuances and hidden meanings can go over his head sometimes, but never when it comes to TJ. And so he’s not at all surprised when TJ becomes outwardly hostile.

“What can you tell us about your suicide attempt two years ago?” the interviewer on the screen asks. “And what about your overdose last year? Was that an accident?”

“Whoa.” Sam tenses up so sharply that the entire couch creaks with the movement of his back snapping to ramrod-straight attention. “Not cool, man.”

On his part, Steve is white-knuckling the pillow in his lap so hard it’s a wonder the thing hasn’t yet exploded in a flurry of padding. He wants to climb into the TV and sock Richard Clarke, “award-winning political journalist,” right in the jaw. This is not journalism. This is sharks circling, the way TJ once told him they would. Steve hadn’t believed him. He hadn’t believed it would be this bad even now, after all that TJ has accomplished.

“What _bullshit_ is this?” Tony spits from somewhere off-camera.

It’s an angry hiss, and Steve is sure no one else has heard it—not Sam, who’s staring at the screen with visible mounting horror, and not Natasha, whose features remain unperturbed but whose green eyes are dark with anger. But Steve’s enhanced hearing catches Tony’s outrage, and if anything, he’s grateful that TJ isn’t alone out there.

“Again,” TJ spits out through gritted teeth, his jaw clenching visibly, painfully, “I don’t see how that’s relevant.”

“I’m just trying to show America how you’ve shed the persona we’d come to know,” Clarke says smoothly. “That you’ve changed.”

 _‘Bastard,’_ Steve thinks, ferocious and incensed. _‘You son of a bitch.’_

“I don’t have to show America squat.” TJ’s answer is sharp and clipped. It sounds like a gunshot.

“Oh God, this is bad.” Sam groans and half-hides his face in his hands like he can’t bear to watch. “Whose idea was it to let _Tony Fucking Stark_ coach him for this again? Man’s got all the diplomatic talents of a wolverine.”

“Nobody understands TJ like Tony does,” Steve fires off, the response an automatic reflex after over a year of observation of said bond.

There is something there, between TJ and Tony, that the rest of them can’t quite begin to grasp, not even Steve. It’s a connection stemming from the similar background of a lonely upbringing—a mutual, visceral understanding of that desperate, all-consuming need to affirm oneself through any means, no matter how self-destructive, just to not disappear. Both men were locked in a golden cage at a too-young age and thrust into a limelight they never asked for.

Nobody understands that _something_ constantly throbbing and burning in TJ’s veins like Tony does.

“Regardless,” Sam says after a moment of silence in which he, too, accepts the undeniable truth of Steve’s statement. “This is very, _very_ bad.”

“He needs to take back control,” Natasha puts in, all matter-of-fact pragmatism.

“He’s not going to.” Steve’s eyes are glued to TJ’s face on the screen. He can read him. He can read him so well it’s like the book of TJ’s thoughts is lying face-up and open right in front of him. “He’s done.”

There’s a horrified pause, with most of the horror waves coming off Sam.

“If he’s done,” Natasha says, with a calmness Steve knows she isn’t feeling, “they win.”

She’s right, of course, but Steve also can’t help thinking that TJ has done enough. He thinks it’s about high time TJ gets out of there and comes home to him and stays the hell away from the wolves. He thinks it’s high time D.C. leaves TJ Hammond alone.

“All right,” Clarke speaks from the TV, smooth and purposeful like the coiling and uncoiling of a snake on desert sand. “Let’s get back to Steve Rogers, then. You say he’s helped you. It can’t have been easy for either of you. You say you wanted to get away from the spotlight, but dating Captain America is hardly inconspicuous, is it?”

“To me he’s just Steve,” TJ says, and there's an entire world in that one sentence. Steve loves him immensely.

“Surely the two are inseparable.”

“Not to me, they aren’t.”

Sam snorts in disgust as he takes a sip from his beer. “If the bastard thinks he can get him to say anything bad about you, he’s got another thing coming.”

“He’s just spinning another angle.” Natasha is watching the screen with a spy’s eye, sharp and calculating. “Trying to get at him through Steve.”

“Fuck.” There’s a low growl; it takes Steve a moment to realize it’s coming from him. At some point he has replaced the pillow in his grasp with the remote control, and he now hurls it across the room as anger swells up inside him. It hits the wall with a crack and splits open, batteries flying.

“Whoa! Easy, man.” Sam reaches out and grabs his arm. “Easy.”

Sam’s touch, as always, is steady and grounding, but it currently does nothing to calm Steve down. His emotions have been dangerously close to the surface lately, lying in wait just underneath his skin. He’s been a powder keg for weeks, and now… Now he looks at TJ’s face on the flat screen of his TV, sees the turmoil in those eyes that he’d like to get lost in, and he just can’t bring himself to take it “easy.”

“Look at him, Sam,” he snaps. By this point, he’s practically panting with rage. “Just _look at him_! He’s only trying his best, and that’s _still_ not good enough for them.”

“He’s gonna need you in control, Steve.” Natasha’s quiet voice penetrates the anger to hit the nail right on the head. “He’s gonna need you calm.”

Steve takes a deep breath in and out his nose, feeling it burn through his nostrils as though he were a dragon and he was breathing fire.

On the network, Clarke plows on, unfazed. “He also must have his fair share of emotional baggage. How do you deal with that?”

TJ’s eyes flash. His body is coiled tight like a spring, and his jaw is clenched so hard that Steve’s teeth hurt in sympathy. “There’s nothing to ‘deal’ with. He’s just the man I love.”

 _‘I love you too,’_ Steve thinks fiercely. He wills it to seep into the TV and travel through cables and computers and whatever hellish machinery is involved in broadcasting. He wills it to reach TJ and calm him down, tame TJ’s whirlwind of emotions the way TJ tames his nightmares at night.

“That’s not an answer, TJ,” Clarke says. The accusation in his voice echoes even in its explicit absence.

And that’s it. This is the moment that has been building for the past few minutes, the one that Steve has seen coming even as it swelled within TJ, snaking upward from his belly until his chest was simply too tight to contain it any longer.

TJ’s face goes blank. It’s a little unsettling, the way his features go flat and marble-like, utterly devoid of expression. His eyes, though… His eyes continue to burn.

“We’re done here,” TJ says, and he stands.

There’s an audible _thud_ as the mic lands on the leather chair after it has been ripped off, and then TJ Hammond walks out of the frame and away.

For a terrible moment, Steve’s living room is dead-silent.

“Holy shit,” Sam finally breathes. “Holy _shit_.”

Clarke is looking straight into the camera and addressing the American audience directly. Steve can’t hear whatever it is that the man is saying, but it’s probably something smooth and shark-like. All Steve can hear is the rush of blood in his ears as he, too, stands up.

“I have to go.” 

Natasha and Sam don’t try to stop him. Then again, even if they had, he wouldn’t have noticed.

 

* * *

 

TJ can’t breathe. He also can’t stop moving. He flies past the doorway into the safety of his apartment and slams the door shut behind him. He never pauses even as he shrugs out of his jacket and all but hurls it at the couch. His body seems utterly incapable of fighting the urge to keep fleeing, even now that he has escaped the prying eyes of D.C.’s number-one publication.

He paces, shaking. He feels constricted in his own skin, itchy and jittery with panic and nausea and disgust. His heart is hammering so fast and so furious in his chest he can’t count the beats. It’s hurting his ribcage. Then again, _everything_ hurts. His head feels like it’s caught in a vice grip—the pressure is unbearable. His breath won’t come. He’s distantly aware of great gasps too close to each other, but he’s way too far gone to do anything about it. He feels like he’s been strung up by his feet, upside down, blood rushing to his head and pooling there, the world gone mad and backward.

He’s done good over the past year. He’s done _so_ good, considering. But it’s still not good enough. It will never be good enough, because they know. It doesn’t matter what he does, _they know_ : TJ Hammond is a fraud. He’s not fooling anyone—not the press, and sure as hell not himself. _They know._

_“Substance abuse has plagued you since you were a teen at the White House.”_

_“What did it feel like to be outed against your will?”_

_“Were drugs behind the suicide attempt last year?”_

_“This ‘life’ of yours or whatever you wanna call it…”_

_“I’m not some pathetic American punchline.”_

_“Captain America ain’t gonna want to get mixed up with someone who’s got a bad habit they just can’t kick.”_

Oh God. Steve.

_“Dating Captain America is hardly inconspicuous, is it?”_

_“He also must have his fair share of emotional baggage.”_

They’re going to come for him. TJ was supposed to keep them away, but he fucked up and now they’re going to come for Steve.

His vision is going blurry and dark at the edges, but he can’t bring himself to worry about it.

He can’t focus.

_“What can you tell us about your suicide attempt two years ago?”_

He can’t think.

_“And what about your overdose last year?”_

He can’t stop shaking.

_“Was that an accident?”_

He can’t breathe.

_“When was the last time you used, TJ?”_

He can’t _breathe_.

“TJ!”

Vaguely, distantly, TJ registers the touch of hands firmly grasping his shoulders. Vaguely, distantly, he thinks he recognizes them.

“Oh God.”

Vaguely, distantly, he thinks he also recognizes the voice. The broken note in it is his fault, and he can’t help but hate himself for it. It’s his not-so-hidden talent, his very own curse, to unfailingly manage to break everything he touches.

“Breathe. I need you to breathe, TJ.”

_Steve._

Full-on recognition slams into him with the force of a sledgehammer. Sheer, all-consuming panic mixes in with the desperate need to hold on to the first and only lifeline he has ever known. His limbs feel like they’re made of lead, but he still moves, sluggishly, to clutch at Steve’s forearms with both hands. He clings to him for dear life as Steve, in turn, keeps a strong hold on his shoulders.

_Steve._

TJ wants to say his name, but he can’t find enough air to do so. The world is spinning, and the solid image of Steve swims and shimmers like a mirage in front of his eyes. 

“Baby.” Steve lets go of one of his shoulders and pushes his hair back with one hand. His fingers are trembling. “Please, breathe. Breathe in with me, okay? Come on, TJ.”

TJ tries to comply. He takes in a breath, but it gets caught in his throat and he chokes on it, coughing. There’s a sharp stabbing pain throbbing in his chest, and he lets out a grunt.

Steve’s eyes widen momentarily. “Are you having chest pains?” His voice sounds clearer, and idly TJ notes that his senses and perceptions are slowly getting back on track.

He nods, shakily. He wants air. Why can’t he get any?

“All right. Come on. Lean back. Easy.” Steve gently but firmly gets him out of his half-slumped position on the floor (when did _that_ happen? he was standing just a moment ago…wasn’t he?) and guides him to sit with his back against the wall.

TJ lets his head fall back. He focuses on the cool sensation of the wall against his nape and the reliable solidity of it against his back. He focuses on Steve’s hand on his knee, on Steve’s fingertips encircling his wrist and pressing against his pulse point.

“That’s it, TJ. Just breathe.”

TJ breathes. His chest hurts and his head is pounding, but he breathes a little easier with each passing moment. Eventually, he’s left sitting on the floor in his living room, the wall at his back and the blue of Steve’s eyes the only things holding him up. Sounds become sharp again and his vision clears. His skin is clammy with cold sweat, and he feels drained and unsteady. The panic is still alive in his belly.

He meets Steve’s gaze and wants to look away. Before he can, however, Steve is smiling at him, and TJ would have to be fucking insane to look away from Steve Rogers’s smile.

Steve lets out an audible breath of relief and reaches out to lay his palm against TJ’s cheek. “Shit. You scared me.”

“I’m sorry.” Originally, TJ intended to apologize for letting Steve find him in the throes of a full-blown panic attack, but as soon as the words are out of his mouth, it becomes about something different. The panic _squeezes_ , pushing his guts all the way up to this throat with such violence that for a terrifying moment he thinks he’s going to be sick. “I’m so sorry. I fucked up. I didn’t mean to…I’m so sorry, Steve.”

“Hey, hey,” Steve says quickly. He moves his hand to cup TJ’s nape, thumb stroking the pulse point under his jaw. “Shhh. It’s okay. You didn’t fuck up. It’s all right.”

TJ lets out a self-deprecating snort that even to his ears sounds like the epitome of misery. “Were you watching?”

“Yeah, I watched. You didn’t fuck up, TJ.”

TJ shakes his head. Steve doesn’t get it, he doesn’t understand the implications. “Help me up,” he says, instead of voicing one of the million thoughts running through his head. There’s a rough, broken undertone in his voice that TJ recognizes from ghosts of campaigns past. It scares the hell out of him.

Steve pulls him to his feet with steady hands that make up for the weakness in TJ’s limbs.

TJ wants to linger. He wants to lean into Steve and burrow against him and disappear. He wants to kiss him until the entire universe has fallen away. At the same time, he feels undeserving of Steve’s touch and of the comfort Steve’s mere presence provides. He feels small and incapable. It’s a vicious cycle of self-hate, where he loathes himself for not measuring up to the situation and is simultaneously disgusted with himself for putting himself down so harshly.

“You okay?” Steve is looking at him with concern and care written all over his face, and TJ can’t stand it. “Do you want some water?”

He nods, because water implies turned backs and distraction. “Yeah. That would be nice.”

He runs his hand over his face as he follows Steve into the kitchen. His palm shakes. He’s sure that if he were to look in a mirror now, he would find his skin is as white as the marble from the countertop of his kitchen island. He lets himself all but fall onto one of the stools and half-slumps onto the surface. The marble is cool under his bare arms, and he allows the sensation to ground him.

“Thanks,” he croaks when a tall glass appears in front of him. He smiles when he spots the brown sugar mixed in with the water.

Steve takes a seat across from him and watches him intently as TJ gulps half the drink down. “They were ruthless, TJ,” he says after the silence has hung between them for a while. “You did well.”

TJ is too exhausted to actually let out the cruel sound that rises up his throat. “If you think _that_ ’s ruthless, you’re in for a few surprises down the road.”

Steve looks horrified.

“And I didn’t do well,” TJ plows on, because he really needs Steve to understand and to be prepared. “I walked away.”

“Because they were getting too personal.”

TJ smiles. Steve can be so fucking naïve at times, it makes his heart hurt. “No. Because you’re where I draw the line.”

Steve stares at him uncomprehendingly for a moment, and when realization finally hits, his face floods with such an onslaught of emotion that TJ almost has to look away again. “TJ,” he says quietly. He reaches out across the cool marble to take TJ’s hand in his, and he brings TJ’s clenched knuckles to his lips. “You don’t have to protect me.”

“Yes I do, dammit!” TJ snatches his hand away as if burned and is on his feet again before he can realize he’s moving. Despite the exhaustion in his muscles, his body just won’t stay still. “They can come after me. They can destroy me for all I care, God knows they’ve done it before. But you…” He only stops his furious pacing long enough to look at Steve and drink him in. “I can’t let them touch you.” He can hear the pleading clear in his own voice, the fear in his gut messing him up from the inside and fraying his vocal cords. “I can’t. You’re the only untainted part of my life. I can’t let them. Please, don’t ask me to. I can’t…I can’t…”

“Okay.” Suddenly Steve is in front of him, looking utterly heartbroken. He pulls TJ to him and holds on like the ground is shaking and he’s the only thing that can keep them both upright. “Okay, TJ. Shhh. Okay.”

TJ squeezes his eyes shut and presses his face into Steve’s shoulder, his arms wrapping around Steve’s back, fists curling around the fabric of Steve’s t-shirt.

He doesn’t know how long they stay like that, suspended. Eventually they pull apart. The look on Steve’s face is open and searching as he studies him while TJ makes his way back to the waiting glass of water.

“You know what you need?”

TJ looks up. “What?”

“Dancing.”

TJ gapes. Steve is not the clubbing type. In fact, Steve gets fidgety at the mere thought. The only company TJ has stepped into a club with over the past year (definitely not often, and _strictly_ for dancing purposes) have been Tony and Clint, occasionally Natasha if she _really_ feels like letting her hair down.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” TJ says once he has recovered enough from the shock to speak, “but I’ve just walked out on national television. The paparazzi are going to be at every club in D.C., waiting for the addict to show up.”

“Don’t talk about yourself like that,” Steve snaps, so vehemently that TJ winces. “Also,” he says after a moment, softening, “who said anything about clubs? We don’t even have to leave the house for this.”

TJ frowns. “What are you talking about?”

Steve only grins at him and then all but runs out of the room.

“Steve?”

A moment later, the notes to Louis Armstrong’s _Have You Heard About Jerry_ fill the apartment.

TJ bursts out laughing. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” He unglues himself from the kitchen island and goes to lean against the doorway, looking out into the den.

Steve is grinning at him from beside the record player. He holds out a hand. “Come on.”

“You can’t dance, _sweetheart_.” TJ is shaking his head even as he gives in and walks into the room. Warmth pools into his stomach and a shot of pleasure runs down his spine as Steve’s arm wraps around his waist and pulls him in close.

“Doesn’t matter. I’ll follow you.”

TJ arches a skeptical eyebrow. “Will you now?”

Steve doesn’t miss a beat. “Yeah. I’d follow you anywhere.”

“Oh my God,” TJ groans as they begin to swing to the music. “You’re such a sap.”

“You love it.”

“I love _you_.”

Steve lights up like the bridge from his hometown and leans in to capture TJ’s lips in a kiss.

On his part, TJ practically melts. He lets himself get lost in the moment and forget everything about hungry journalists and sly politicians, just for a few precious minutes.

The thing is, TJ doesn’t know how to dance either, at least not to 1960s jazz, and so they end up blindly following the lead of Jewel Brown’s voice in a chaos of swing and lindy hop and something that cannot be identified as any existing dance steps known to man. It’s messy and ungraceful and borderline dangerous, and TJ loves it.

By the time they find themselves sprawled onto the couch, TJ is breathless and for a change his heart is pounding with something that isn’t anxiety. He turns his head and drinks in the sight of Steve looking flushed and happy slumped against the cushions next to him.

“That’s it,” TJ decides, “we’re finding a swing dance club or a speakeasy or whatever. Jesus, look at you.” He dives in to smack his lips over Steve’s, and his stomach does a funny fluttering thing when Steve laughs against his mouth.

“Now who’s the sap?” 

TJ grunts and bumps against Steve’s shoulder. He pulls back to catch Steve’s gaze and hold it steady. “Thank you,” he says seriously, hoping he can actually convey just how grateful he is.

Steve’s grin immediately softens into his trademark honest, open smile. “Anytime.”

TJ takes in a proper breath for what feels like the first time that day. He settles with his head on Steve’s shoulder and allows the quiet and Steve’s sturdy presence to soothe the last remains of the terror.

“It’s gonna get worse.” He finally finds it within himself to speak a few minutes later. Steve’s fingers are in his hair, carding through the short locks, and they don’t stop their movement. TJ is unbelievably grateful for it. “Now that I’ve gone and messed up.”

“I don’t understand,” Steve admits. “Why do you keep saying you’ve messed up? Yeah, you walked away when they wouldn’t stop asking questions you didn’t want to answer. So what?”

TJ presses a little closer. “They’re going to see it as me having something to hide and being nowhere near as stable as my family would have them believe.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“Yeah, it is,” TJ agrees easily. “But it’s what’s gonna happen. They’re gonna come after me. They’re going to do all they can to get me to answer more questions.”

There’s a short pause in which TJ swears he can hear the wheels of Steve’s brain whirring. “Can it be avoided in any way?”

 _“Can I protect you?”_ is what Steve is really asking, and _fuck_ , TJ loves him so much.

He turns his head to press a kiss onto Steve’s cotton-clad shoulder. “It is what it is.”

Steve wraps an arm around his shoulders and pulls him impossibly closer. “I’m here. You take the lead on this, I trust you, but I’m here. Okay?”

Something within TJ cracks and breaks, and it takes all of his sapped strength to hold himself together and not break down in tears right then and there. He swallows hard and nods.

“Okay.” Despite his best efforts, it comes out broken.

 _Something_ twists and knots in his gut, the embodiment of the ugly thoughts swirling through his head.

“What is it, TJ? Talk to me.”

TJ lets out a wet, strangled chuckle. “That serum made you a mind reader, too?”

Steve squeezes him tighter and doesn’t reply, and TJ takes it for what it is: a gentle command to go on.

He takes in a shaky breath and burrows deeper against Steve’s body, hoping that if he doesn’t have to look him in the eye, it will be easier. Maybe, just maybe, he will feel just a little less disgusted with himself as he voices what has been bouncing around in his skull for the past few hours.

“It was easier, last time.” His voice is rough and scratchy. It feels like sandpaper scraping against his throat. “The last campaign. It was easier.”

“Why?” Even without looking at him, TJ can hear the frown in Steve’s voice.

 _‘Oh God. I can’t.’_ He swallows again and almost chokes on it.

“Hey.” Steve’s hand comes up to stroke his cheek. “It’s okay. Whatever it is, you can tell me. I promise.”

 _‘I really can’t,’_ TJ thinks desperately, but he knows there’s no turning back. “I had the drugs back then. They made it easier to cope.”

He disentangles himself to sit up and hide his face in his hands. He breathes in and out, trying not to throw up. What kind of person is he, to _still_ have thoughts of cocaine running around in his head and through his veins? What kind of man longs for something that has destroyed him so completely before?

“I’m sorry,” he hears himself choke out from behind his palms. “I’m so sorry.”

He’s crying. _God damn him_ to hell and back, _he’s fucking crying_. The one thing he had promised himself he wouldn’t do, at least not in front of the man he has already put through enough for one day.

“TJ.” Steve’s voice is soft and filled to the brim with emotion—and completely devoid of pity.

TJ feels himself being pulled against Steve’s chest again, strong, life-saving arms wrapping firmly around him to keep the world at bay.

“Don’t be sorry,” Steve murmurs, even as TJ shakes apart in his arms. “It was your coping mechanism back then. It wasn’t a good one, but it was all you had.”

TJ shakes his head. He doesn’t think words have been invented to define just how fucked in the head he must have been to develop _that_ kind of coping pattern.

“We just need to come up with a better strategy this time around.”

 _We_. The word reverberates through the entirety of TJ’s being, grounding him even as it shakes him to his very core. “Steve.” It comes out strangled and cracked as TJ wraps his arms around Steve’s waist and holds on with everything he has left.

“Yeah,” Steve says immediately. There’s the pressure of lips against TJ’s hair. “I’m here. I’ve got you.”

Nobody has ever “got” TJ. He still can’t wrap his mind around it. His head spins and his temples throb. He keeps his eyes closed and focuses on the warmth of Steve’s body against his. He’s not sure where he ends and where Steve begins, tangled up as they are, but he doesn’t care to find out just yet.

He doesn’t quite register it when the darkness of exhausted sleep comes and everything falls away. Everything but Steve.

 


	8. Strategy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) It's been so long since I last updated and I'm so, so sorry, everyone! I recently began freelancing full-time, and it's been...intense. But I've finally gotten the hang of it as far as time management goes, and I can confidently state that updates will FINALLY be regular. Once a week, like clockwork. 
> 
> I hope you're still with me, and that this very long chapter somehow makes up for lost time. 
> 
>  
> 
> 2) Massive, MASSIVE thanks to @feveredsweetness for helping me figure out the direction this chapter needed to take. It had me stumped for the longest time, and I'm truly in your debt for finally getting me unstuck. <3

****_Years later, a landmine_

_excavates us—crack-seal veins_

_bubbling up, flaring out—formations_

_pressurized from inside._

_Is breath_

_our only hopeful model? Is exhaling_

_our exit strategy?  
_  

— _Disclosure_ , Rebecca Givens Rolland

 

 

“I mean, thank you, really, but I’m not sure I need this thing—“

“Shush. Sure you do.” A resonating clang. “All musicians do.” A vibrating, ominous thrum. “But you’re the only one who gets to have it.”

Steve is not sure who it is that Tony is trying to fool. He hides his smirk behind the coffee mug in his hand and continues to observe the exchange.

It’s 7:15 in the morning, and all of TJ’s groggy annoyance at having Tony Stark all but barge in at “the crack of dawn, Steve, _what the fuck_ ,” has left its place to nervous hovering. Tony is elbow-deep inside the piano, and TJ looks uncomfortable and apprehensive as though he were the one being prodded, his bottom lip pulled tight between his teeth.

There’s a sharp, metallic sound, sudden and loud enough to make the entire apartment vibrate with it.

TJ pales visibly. “What was that?”

“I’m not sure…” Tony extracts his arm and peers into the insides of the instrument. “Honey-B, operation recon.” He snaps his fingers, and the minuscule drone that has been buzzing around his head dives obediently into the deep dark cave that is the piano’s body.

The view from the drone’s electronic eyes pops up onto Tony’s tablet, and he taps away at the display, frowning. “Oh, shit.”

“What do you mean, ‘oh shit’? There better be no ‘oh shit’s around my piano, Tony.” TJ looks about ready to faint.

“Just…shhh. I’m trying to work here.” Tony never once looks up from the device as he waves a hand dismissively. “Go sip coffee with your boyfriend.”

TJ spins around and gives Steve a wide-eyed “can you fucking believe this guy” look. He does as he’s told, however, and Steve has a mug filled by the time TJ joins him at the kitchen island.

“I swear to God, if he messes up my piano, there won’t be enough Iron Man suits to keep him safe.”

Steve swallows the amused snort that climbs up his throat, on account of TJ looking genuinely panicked. “I’m sure he knows what he’s doing.”

“ _Does_ he? Does ‘oh shit’ sound like something someone who knows what he’s doing would say?”

TJ’s glare is blue and sharp, and Steve almost winces. He might fight alien invasions on a semi-regular basis, but when angry, TJ is terrifying enough that not even Captain America will mess with him.

There’s another clang, followed by a triumphant, “Ha!”.

“Oh, God.” TJ groans and runs a hand down his face, taking a much-needed sip of coffee afterward.

Steve studies him as discreetly as he can. TJ looks tired, the events from the previous day still clearly etched into his body—it’s in the tense way he holds himself, in the arm he’s got wrapped around his abdomen even as he stands at the kitchen counter, like he’s trying to protect himself from an incoming blow.

Steve wants to touch him. He wants to look him in the eye and tell him that he doesn’t need that arm between himself and the world, because Captain America’s shield is big enough for the both of them.

Still, for all of his exhaustion, TJ’s eyes are bright, sharp even, as they track Tony’s every movement. His shoulders are not as stiff as he surveys the scene in the den. Steve wonders if Tony is aware of the effect his presence is having.

“I’ve got something for you,” the man had announced as he strode into the apartment. “Your soundboard is going to sing like an angels’ choir.”

TJ had blinked at him, still half asleep. “What?”

Tony had launched into a detailed explanation that Steve recalls absolutely _nothing_ about; he’s fairly sure that TJ, for all of his knowledge of piano anatomy, has only a marginally clearer idea. Not that it matters: it was never about the device. It was never about the brand-new sound technology Tony has developed in one night specifically for TJ’s piano.

Steve knows Tony hasn’t slept—he can see it in the jittery energy, in the overly-stimulated glint in the man’s eyes. He knows the tech is an excuse, a means to a purpose. He knows it was always about TJ.

Tony will never say it out loud. He’s not the kind of friend who sits you down with a cup of tea and talks it all out with you. He’s the kind of friend who shows up at your doorstep with a tailor-made piece of newly developed technology that you don’t really need or understand, just to make you smile.

And TJ does smile, sure enough. Once the device is finally installed within the insides of the piano, beautifully designed to look like a bass string that blends in perfectly with the rest. Once he sits down and tries out a few chords and the sound is indeed cleaner and amplified and _alive_ , so much so that Steve can feel his skin almost vibrate with it, TJ smiles. His eyes widen, bright and childlike.

“Holy shit. Oh my God.” TJ’s hands are flying over the keys, chords and harmonies coming forth in an eager crescendo. “Tony…holy shit…this is amazing.”

“Of course it is, I made it.” Tony grins smugly and pats TJ’s shoulder. “It’s all yours, Wonder Boy.”

Steve has the sudden urge to hug him, but he can only imagine the shock on both their parts.

“That was very well done, Tony,” he says instead as they retreat to the kitchen area, leaving TJ glued to his piano. He offers his friend a mug filled to the brim with the blackest coffee.

Tony shrugs as he hoists himself up onto one of the tall stools at the kitchen island. “I had some time on my hands.”

“Uh-huh,” Steve hums knowingly.

Tony really isn’t fooling anyone, especially with how his gaze remains focused on TJ, zeroing in on him from over the brim of the mug.

Steve lets him keep up the charade and takes a seat across the marble-topped counter. He allows himself a few moments to also watch TJ get lost in his music. It’s the freest he ever gets to see him, and he treasures it every time, stores the image away in that compartment of his brain that guards the memories that will keep him grounded on the dark days. 

“You guys get any sleep last night?”

Tony’s voice brings him back, and Steve has to take a sip from his own mug to cover up the wince that follows the question.

“Yeah. Some.”

Tony watches him intently. “How messed up was he?”

Steve hesitates. He’s not sure how much he should reveal, and he’s not sure words have been invented to describe just how “messed up” TJ was.

Tony, of course, gets it immediately. “That bad, huh?”

_“It was easier, last time. I had the drugs back then. They made it easier.”_

The words have been thrumming under Steve's skin like an approaching menace ever since. They vibrate throughout the whole of his body—fear humming wild and electric, making his nerves sing like wires. He wants to tell Tony that he has never found TJ in such a state. That there was a moment, a heart-stopping split of a second, in which he thought he wouldn’t be able to talk TJ down from his panic. That when the chest pains came in, Steve’s own terror skyrocketed.

Instead, he just says, “They really got to him, yes.”

“I wanted to blast that guy off the face of the planet.” Tony all but growls into his coffee. “Fucking reporters.”

Steve gives him a small smile. It feels good to know that TJ has someone out there watching his six where Steve can’t reach, on a battlefield Steve doesn’t know how to navigate.

“I’m out of my depth here, Tony,” he admits after a moment. “I’m not exactly an expert when it comes to dealing with the press. I don’t know how to help him.”

“Just keep doing what you’re doing, Cap. It works.”

Steve highly doubts that’s true. “He’s in it because of me. Because he wants to keep me out of it.”

The limelight. The scrutiny. He doesn’t have to define “it”: they both know.

Tony rolls his eyes. “There it is. The martyr complex.” He takes a long sip from his mug, then sets it aside to find Steve’s gaze and hold it steady. “Listen up. That guy out there worships the ground you walk on, if the teeth cavity-inducing heart-eyes are any indication. And it doesn’t take a genius such as yours truly to figure out you’ve been having a hard time of it lately.” He doesn’t give Steve the time to try and deny the truth of it. “He’s just looking out for you, in the only way he knows how. Let him.”

Steve presses his lips tightly together. None of it makes any sense to him—none of the politics, none of the games. None of all these expectations TJ is supposed to live up to in order to maintain an image that doesn’t fit him.

“And who’s looking out for him?”

Tony scoffs. “Excuse you, I’m insulted. I’m practically his PR manager.” He runs a hand tiredly across the back of his neck, the first telltale sign that he may not be as cool with all of this as he would have Steve believe. “Look, I’m not gonna lie to you. It may get ugl _ier_. This whole campaign thing is basically a trigger minefield.”

Steve’s stomach tightens uncomfortably. “You think he’s going to relapse?”

“No,” Tony says immediately, fires the word off like a bullet in response to an attack. “I think he’ll try his damnest not to, even if that means stretching himself so thin he might as well disappear.

Steve scowls. He _really_ doesn’t like that image.

“You’d better hold on tight, Cap. Use all that super-serum strength of yours. Because it’s gonna be a shitshow, and that kid self-destructs like a pro. Trust me on this, takes one to know one.” Despite his aloofness, Tony’s lips are pressed into a thin line as they lift into a self-deprecating smile.

Steve offers a grin in return. “You don’t self-destruct nearly as much these days, Tony.”

He knows the man wouldn’t be comfortable with anything else, wouldn’t know what to do with the heartfelt words that are actually running through Steve’s head. But he’ll be damned if he lets the remark slide and allows Tony to talk about himself as though he were still the self-involved, self-obliterating asshole Steve met seven years ago.

“Yeah, well. I must be mellowing out with age,” Tony says, draining the last of his coffee as he gets to his feet. “Speaking of, I’m beat. I’m gonna get these old bones some sleep.”

“Whatever you say, Tony.” Steve catches his friend’s gaze and holds it. He’s not going to insert sarcasm into this. “Thank you.”

For once, Tony doesn’t throw any sass back at him either. “You’re welcome.”

There’s a knock at the door, pushing its way through TJ’s rendition of something that may or may not be Beethoven (Steve really has no idea).

Tony arches an eyebrow. “Your place sure gets crowded in the mornings.”

“I don’t think we’re expecting—“ Steve trails off when the words register. He feels himself flush to the tip of his ears. “This is TJ’s place.”

“Hate to break it to you, Cap, but you practically live here.” Tony takes a look at Steve’s face and bursts out laughing. “Look at you! You’re redder than my suit. How adorable is that?”

“Shut up.”

Steve has never been more grateful for the fact that whenever he plays, the world could very well be ending around him and TJ wouldn’t notice. It provides the perfect excuse for him to walk away from Tony.

He freezes when he opens the door and finds himself face to face with Bud Hammond. The former President looks composed enough, but Steve can feel the anger radiate off of him like a living thing. The man stands erect and taut; his jaw is clenched and his eyes are hard as he gives Steve a curt nod in greeting.

“Captain. Is my son here?”

_‘No.’_

The word comes unbidden, flashes red and angry across Steve’s brain like a neon sign. He doesn’t want the spell of TJ’s music-induced bliss to be broken just yet. It’s too soon, the magic was too short-lived.

His jaw twitches as he fights the urge to shut the door in Bud’s face and steps aside to let the man in instead.

“He’s here.” It’s unnecessary, really; _of course_ TJ is here. Why would Steve be, otherwise?

Idly, he wonders about how everyone seems to assume he lives at TJ’s apartment. The implications make his heart beat too fast for comfort. _Home_ , says the thrumming of Steve’s blood in his veins. _Home home home._

“Dad?”

He turns around sharply. TJ has stopped playing and is now standing right behind him. He looks a little lost, and Steve already hates whatever it is that Bud Hammond has come to say.

“What are you doing here?”

“Take a wild guess.” Bud levels his son with a hard stare as he all but marches his way inside. “We need to talk—” He cuts off when he catches sight of Tony, who looks like he no longer has any intention of going anywhere and is leaning back against the island counter, elbows propped up onto the marble. “Mr. Stark.”

“Mr. President.” The word drips with mockery.

Steve braces himself inwardly. Tony really, _really_ doesn’t like Hammond Senior. Couple that disdain with lack of sleep, and you have a very high-strung Tony Stark. And _that_ never bodes well.

On his part, Bud looks between Steve and Tony as though he’s assessing enemy armies on a battlefield. “Gentlemen,” he finally says, voice taking on those honeyed politician notes, “you’ll excuse us, I’m sure. This is kinda private.”

“Really, Dad?” TJ’s voice, in turn, is laced with cutting-edge vitriol as he stares his father down. “Something that was seen by over 300 million people is private?”

Steve suppresses a wince. There was never a doubt as to what Bud has come here to discuss, but a part of him still hoped he might be wrong. He still hoped it might just be a father checking up on his son at a stressful time. Apparently, no such luck.

“Fine. In that case, I’d love to know what the _fuck_ you were thinking when you decided to walk out on a Pulitzer-winning journalist on national television.”

TJ shrugs. A hard, familiar shell clamps down around him to create a full-body armor as formidable as Iron Man’s suit. It doesn’t make TJ entirely bullet-proof, but it does allow the shots to ricochet.

Steve has spent the better part of a year patiently stripping off that armor piece by piece, and here it is again, sturdier than ever. A spark of anger ignites within his chest and escalates into a flame at record speed, so much so that he has to clench his teeth until they gnash and grind against one another in order to keep it in check.

“I wasn’t thinking anything,” TJ speaks in that careless, airy way he has about him whenever he needs the world to _back the fuck off_. “I was just done with his crap.”

“That’s rich, son, because here I was thinking we were done with yours.”

“What does that even mean?”

“It means I thought you were done pulling this shit. You should know how to handle yourself by now. Are you _trying_ to sabotage your mother?”

“Oh!” The sound TJ makes now is grating and ugly. “Sure. Because it’s _all_ about her.”

“Of course it is! Right now it is. You _know_ that.”

Bud looks furious and fired-up and menacing, which only makes TJ stand in taller defiance in response.

“Has it ever occurred to you,” he begins, eyes flashing dangerously, “that it could just be about me not being willing to sit there and let a stranger drill me about my life?”

“Oh, please.” Bud scoffs. “That wasn’t drilling. You’ve had much worse.”

A look flashes across TJ’s features. It’s gone under the fraction of a second, but Steve sees all the pain and the anguish of a lifetime of exposure rush forth in that one look. TJ never talks about what it was like for him when he was forced to come out to the world as a teen, but Steve sees it all flash across the troubled blue of his eyes.

“Maybe I don’t wanna stand for it anymore. Maybe I’m done with all of that.”

“‘fraid you’re not, son. That’s just not how it works.”

“With all due respect, Mr. President,” Tony speaks up casually as he emerges from the kitchen, “perhaps you’re the one who’s not quite clear on how it works.”

Bud levels him with a scathing stare. “I’ve been breathing and living politics for quite some time, Mr. Stark. I believe I know a thing or two.”

“It’s not politics I’m referring to. You don’t know your son, that’s the issue here.”

For a moment, Bud’s face flames red. “Oh, and _you_ do?”

There is such a thing as body language in every situation—signs and tells to read, much like on the battlefield. Steve is much more apt at deciphering military codes, but he has improved enough in his interpretation of everyday social cues that he knows exactly what Tony is doing as he comes to stand at TJ’s side. Tony Stark is declaring his loyalties.

“I believe I do, yes.”

“It’s okay, Tony.” TJ’s voice is quiet and strong as he lays a placating hand on Tony’s arm, and Steve frankly has no idea how he’s doing it.

“No, TJ, it’s really not.” Tony’s eyes never leave Bud.

TJ runs a hand over his face and takes a deep, steadying breath. “Look, Dad, I wasn’t trying to sabotage anyone. I just—”

“Well, you did,” Bud snaps, quick and harsh, whip-like. “Including yourself.” He seems to deflate then, features softening ever so slightly. “Believe it or not, TJ, I’m proud of your progress. Other people were beginning to respect you, too. What do you think is going to happen after last night? Your dramatic exit only served to give the impression that the well-balanced persona you’ve found over the past year was nothing but a big joke.”

And just like that, TJ is done. “Who?” he snaps right back, voice rising. “Who are these people who respect me so much, and why should I give a flying fuck about what they think?”

“Because that’s how our world works! TJ…” Bud stops himself, probably from hurtling off words that he would regret. “People will always dissect anything and everything you say or do. You gotta stop taking everything so personally. It’s just politics, son.”

TJ crosses his arms over his chest, his body screaming off the need to self-protect. Steve wishes he could pick up the shield and hide him behind it right now.

“That wasn’t politics. That was my personal life they were dissecting last night.”

“You’re a Hammond!” Bud finally explodes. “It’s your _job_ to be dissected!”

The silence that follows is a terrible one.

“Aw, hell. I didn’t mean it like that. TJ—”

“Don’t touch me.” TJ scrambles back as if the air itself burns him.

Steve himself is still reeling from the impact, and when TJ’s back collides with his chest, he reaches out to steady him.

“That’s enough.” He can hear the steel in his own voice, can almost feel Captain America settle over him like a mantle.

“Look,” Bud holds up both hands in surrender, “all I’m saying is, your mother’s campaign has barely started. You _cannot_ pull that kind of stunt so early on. How are you gonna last?”

TJ’s face is stark white. There’s a look there that screams. It’s loud enough that Steve can almost hear it: _“I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.”_

Steve decides right then and there that he’s had more than enough. “He’s got us, sir. And with all due respect, I think you should leave now.”

“With all due respect, Captain,” Bud fires back, meeting Steve’s gaze and holding it steady, “I’ll leave once I’m done speaking with my son.”

Steve won’t budge. He can’t afford to. TJ can’t afford him to. “I believe you’re done.”

“Why are you really here, Dad?” TJ speaks up again, and he sounds tired and stretched thin and _downright furious_ , underneath. “I’m sure it’s not just to remind me I fucked up, something I’m well aware of.”

Bud looks between the three of them for a long moment. They’re standing in rank, Steve realizes. TJ in the middle, he and Tony on each side. Tony’s stance is tense enough that Steve wouldn’t be shocked if the suit came crashing in through the window. _I dare you,_ Tony’s entire body is screaming. _I fucking dare you. Take one more step. Say one more word.  
_

TJ is somehow standing tall and resistant through the whole thing, even though there’s a slight curve to his shoulders that speaks of weight and defeat.

As for Steve…well, Steve has been filled with righteous fury many times in his long life, but rarely has it felt this intense. He wants this done (whatever _this_ is), and he wants it done now.

“We’re having a charity gala,” Bud finally reveals. “To pull the attention away from you and redeem your mother’s image in the eyes of the voters.”

“What does her image have to do with my interview?”

Bud visibly reins himself in, inhaling deeply through his nose. “Don’t be naïve, TJ. She’s a woman. Half of what she’s being judged on is her skills as a mother.”

“My failures are her failures.” In the quiet that once again follows, TJ’s voice sounds like a gunshot. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“We’re having a gala,” But says again, and his deflection is answer enough. “I would like you to make an appearance, to show your progress is real and solid.”

“Okay.”

Steve does a double-take. He had expected a lot of different reactions from TJ, but acquiescence wasn’t one of them.

Bud hesitates, looking truly uncomfortable for the first time since he has walked in—maybe for the first time since Steve has met him. “Perhaps Captain Rogers would consider—”

“No fucking way,” TJ growls low and feral at the back of his throat, taking a step forward.

Bud backs off immediately. “Fine, okay. Just you, then.”

TJ’s glare is made of lava. “Fine.”

“‘Fine’ my chrome-plated ass.”

All gazes turn to Tony as one.

“None of this is even remotely ‘fine.’ If this thing has to happen, it’ll happen on a few terms.”

Bud bristles. “Who are you to—”

“I’m his PR manager.”

TJ frowns at him. “Um…you are?”

“Yeah, of course. Now let me handle this.” Tony takes one step forward, planting himself in front of a visibly outraged Bud Hammond. “The gala will be held at Stark Tower and hosted by Stark Industries. My team will handle the press. You get me as your guest of honor.”

“Frankly, Mr. Stark, I don’t think—”

“You’re gonna turn it down? Really? A charity event hosted by the Nation’s favorite Avenger?”

TJ clears his throat. “Actually, I think Steve is—”

“Pipe it, Wonder Boy. I’m negotiating.”

“Mr. Stark—”

“ _Fine_. Twist my arm, then. All available Avengers will be in attendance.”

“Yes, they will.” The words are out of Steve’s mouth before he can even register uttering them.

Now that he has, however, he knows it’s their best option. If TJ has to do this, Steve wants to be there, and he knows for a fact the others will feel the same. The Avengers’ attendance _will_ diffuse the tension, as well as divert the general focus.

It’s flawless, really. Steve makes a mental note to get Stark a fruit basket.

TJ, of course, has a different opinion. “No, they won’t,” he hisses, fiery gaze moving from Steve to Tony and back again. “What are you doing? I don’t want any of you involved. You’ve just gotten back into the public’s good graces.”

Steve’s heart does a strange flip in his chest. This man. This wonderful, selfless man who will still give his all to the ones he cares about even while he’s cracked at the middle. Steve wants nothing more than to kiss him until they both forget the world is turning.

“Yeah, which will last a grand total of two days as it is,” Tony retorts. “Falling out of people’s good graces is my personal specialty, and my colleagues aren’t very far behind. Might as well strike the iron while it’s hot, and _my_ iron is always scathing.”

Steve catches the signs, the small telltales of TJ’s resolve faltering. The near-indiscernible slump in his shoulders, the tightening of his mouth. The way his teeth clamp down on his bottom lip.

“Let us help, TJ,” he encourages, nudging the last of that resolve.

TJ stares at him for a long moment. Eventually, he gives a small nod—and then he stands up straighter, his expression turning steel-like as he catches Steve’s gaze. “This is a one-time thing, Steve. I still don’t want you involved. Got it?”

Steve knows better than to push his luck. “Got it.”

As always, it’s Tony who cuts to the chase. “So, do we have an arrangement?”

“I suppose,” Bud agrees begrudgingly, and he reaches out to shake Tony’s proffered hand. “I’ll have Elaine’s office call yours for details.”

Tony claps his hands together in exaggerated delight. “Wonderful. Can’t wait.”

Bud’s stare levels once again on his son. “Are you happy with the compromise?”

For once, it actually sounds like a genuine question.

TJ rolls his eyes. “Frankly, I’d rather jump from the Washington Monument.”

“TJ—”

“I’ll be on my best behavior.” TJ smiles, and it’s a cutting, sharp, unsettling thing.

Bud seems on the verge of saying something, but wisely thinks better of it. “I’ll see myself out.”

He waits for TJ to speak, but TJ doesn’t offer anything else as he watches his father walk out of his apartment.

“What’s he so grouchy about?” Tony grumbles once the door has closed. “They’re getting a free event and free publicity. Seems kinda ungrateful to me.”

“Tony,” Steve says, because TJ hasn’t moved yet.

TJ stands stock-still, until finally he turns around. There’s something in his posture, in the way he carries himself as though he’s a violin string about to snap.

“I…um…I’m just…I’m gonna get some air.” He walks past them both and picks up the pack of cigarettes on the coffee table, moving on autopilot.

Steve winces as the french doors that lead out to the balcony close with a snap. A moment later, smoke rises into the air around TJ as the morning sun casts its rays on him: still under a spotlight.

“I’m gonna head out, Cap.” Tony’s voice pulls him out of his reverie.

Steve watches the man collect his toolbox and sling it over a muscular shoulder. “Tony, are you sure about this? It’s a big commitment.”

“What, a party?” Tony barks out a chuckle. “Please. Pepper will be thrilled.”

“No, she won’t.”

There’s a pause, and a wink. “No, she won’t.”

Steve can’t help but smile, which apparently was Tony’s intent all along, because the man gives a hard slap to his shoulder as he walks past him on his way to the door. “I’ll pass along all the details as soon as they’re defined.”

Tony’s head pokes back in half a split second later. “Wear a tux.”

 

* * *

 

The piano serves as a painful reminder of lost peace as Steve walks past it on his way to the balcony. The light suddenly feels too bright as he steps outside. The world is too loud. His skin is too tight. He’s on edge and on full alert, and there’s nothing he can tell himself that will change that state. At the VA, they call it hypervigilance.

He wonders if they have a name for TJ’s state—for the desperate tension in his back or the shadows in his eyes as he stares off into the distance. Steve knows better than to touch him right now, no matter how badly he wants to.

“I’m good,” TJ speaks up once he registers Steve’s presence. It sounds hollow and automatic, like a reflex. “I’m good, Steve. Go back inside.”

TJ’s voice has that muffled quality of someone talking on a smoke inhale. He exhales ephemeral spirals into the air. The hand that holds the cigarette is shaking ever so slightly, and Steve is not going anywhere.

Instead, he takes a breath and walks up to lean against the balcony rail. It’s sturdy and stable and grounding, and he welcomes the support as he stares out into the cityscape. TJ’s is a green, tree-lined neighborhood, and Steve’s gaze is drawn to the birds fluttering about, wings like a too-fast heartbeat. Like his own overly-agitated pulse.

Bud’s visit has put them both so on edge that Steve’s skin crawls with it. It’s as if shots have been fired, and even though the commotion has died down, he just can’t get rid of the adrenaline coursing through his system.

He feels like he’s at war.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Always at war.

His fists curl around the metal bar of the rail. He focuses on the coolness of the iron to force himself to stay in the present.

“TJ,” he says.

He doesn’t know what he’s saying with that.

_“Are you okay?”_

and

_“What happens now?”_

and

_“I don’t know the rules to this game.”_

TJ seems to hear it all. His hand comes to cup the back of Steve’s neck, pianist fingers kneading the knots at the base.

“Yeah,” he responds quietly. “It’s all good.”

The words are no longer hollow and robotic. Steve hears it all, too.

_“I’m here.”_

and

_“You’re here.”_

and

_“We’re okay.”_

and

_“I love you.”_

Steve turns around and frames TJ’s face between his hands. There’s still a bit of a faraway quality to the gaze in TJ’s eyes, but it’s mostly clear; Steve knows then that he has TJ back. He tugs the man close and kisses him slowly, pulling them both in from the chaos.

TJ makes a noise from the back of his throat, and it stirs something deep and feral within Steve’s chest. The cigarette falls to the ground, forgotten, as TJ’s hands curl around the front of Steve’s t-shirt.

When they finally pull apart, TJ’s lips are red and kiss-swollen. He’s smiling as he reaches out to push back the errant strands that have fallen in front of Steve’s eyes.

“Hair’s getting long, Captain.”

“Just the way you like it, darling.”

The gentle teasing contains all of the unsaid—it hangs in the air between them like a velvety blanket. Steve wants to curl up under it and never come out again.

TJ brings their foreheads together and closes his eyes, breathing quiet and deep. It’s peaceful, but Steve knows this kind of peace; it’s the silence of soldiers readying for battle.

“Steve?”

“Yeah.”

There’s an electric hum in the air, sneaking into the quiet. It’s coming. Whatever _it_ is.

“I think…I think I’d better call my sponsor.”

And there _it_ is.

Steve can’t say that he’s surprised, but the subtext still twists his guts right back into knots.

_“I want a hit, Steve. I want a hit so badly and you’re not enough to stop it and I’m sorry.”_

That’s what _it_ is. That’s what isn’t being said.

“I’m sorry,” TJ is saying aloud. “I’m so sorry.”

Steve secures his arms around him the moment he feels TJ starting to pull away. “It’s okay. It’s okay, TJ. You do what you have to do.”

TJ exhales shakily. He’s stiff and tense in Steve’s embrace. He’s also vibrating with anger. “I shouldn’t want it.”

 _It_. The Beast. The coke that muscle memory still has rushing and galloping through TJ’s system when his guard is down, teasing him with memories of invincibility.

“It’s okay,” Steve says again, because what else is there to say? “It’s okay to need help, TJ. You say that to me all the time.”

TJ pulls back slowly and offers a small smile. “I do, don’t I?”

“Yeah, you do.”

“But you don’t believe it. Not for yourself.”

Steve considers. “I’m starting to.”

TJ nods, and he visibly pulls himself together. He still looks somewhat unsteady, but the glint in his eyes and the stubborn set to his jaw are back in place, and Steve feels something inside him uncurl with relief.

“Let’s go for a run, huh?”

Steve blinks in shock, and then he realizes that TJ is watching him intently. Knowingly. TJ _knows_. He knows about the adrenaline in Steve’s body.

“You can lap me over and over and over again to your heart’s content.”

“You hate running,” Steve points out.

TJ shrugs. “Yeah, well. I also get off on humiliation, so. _Destroy me_ , Cap.”

Nothing that involves running has any business sounding so sexual, but somehow it does, and Steve can feel himself flush with it,

TJ must have seen it, because he’s grinning maniacally as he leans in, his mouth impossibly close to Steve’s ear. “Hold that thought.”

His voice is a husky murmur ghosting over Steve’s ear shell. He nibbles once at Steve’s earlobe, teeth scraping maddeningly slow against the soft skin.

Then he’s gone, and Steve watches him walk back inside with his heart racing and his skin on fire.

“Come on, lazy bones!” 

The run that follows it the fastest and shortest of Steve’s life.

 

 


	9. Paralyzed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone!  
> A couple of notes for this chapter: 
> 
> 1) Trigger Warning:  
> \- Self-harm (as a result of unhealthy coping mechanisms). Nothing too graphic, but still...please, take care of yourself.  
> \- PTSD-induced anger
> 
> 2) A note on 1930s lingo can be found at the end of the chapter.
> 
> 3) AAAAAAHHHH!!! I HAVE NEWS!! The infinitely talented and infinitely lovely [secretlytodream](https://archiveofourown.org/users/secretlytodream/pseuds/secretlytodream%22) has created a video trailer for this story! It's AMAZING! I could not be more grateful. Check it out [HERE](http://secretlytodream.tumblr.com/post/184185255978/this-a-fic-trailer-for-a-steve-rogerstj-hammond). <3

_Do not dream that I speak_

_as one defrauded of delight,_

_sick, shaken by each heart-beat_

_or paralyzed, stretched at length._

— _The Gift_ , H.D.

 

 

TJ wakes up with a gasp. He shoots bolt upright in bed, heart pounding away in his chest. His entire body thrums with adrenaline, but there’s no nightmare lingering behind his eyelids as he squeezes his eyes shut and tries to calm down.

Everything is catching up to him all at once. He feels jittery and constricted and out of place. There’s _something_ squeezing his chest and crushing his ribcage. He takes a deep breath, and he’s not at all surprised when it comes out strangled and he chokes on it, coughing. He half turns, ready to _calm the fuck down_ and press his body close to Steve’s warm, solid one.

But Steve’s not there.

TJ blinks—once, twice, three times. Nothing changes: only an empty spot and carefully straightened-out covers remain where Steve should be. TJ’s heart resumes its mad dance as his worry spikes. He throws the blankets off, angry at how orderly they look on Steve’s side and angry at the contrasting chaos inside of him.

The apartment is not big (he deliberately looked for something small and cozy, a place he could make into a home and that didn’t have 132 rooms), and it only takes him one glance to know that Steve is not in it. It also doesn’t take a genius to figure out where he is.

TJ pads his way out to the hallway and into the elevator. He’s barefoot, and the tiles in the lobby are cold under his toes when he steps out onto the ground floor. He doesn’t care. Just like he doesn’t care that the chill in the February night air is raising goosebumps on his naked arms. Still, he’s grateful he at least had the sense to throw on a t-shirt before he embarked on his little Search & Rescue mission.

He hears the familiar _thud-thud-thud_ of fists hitting leather before he even opens the doors to the gym. The lights overhead are white and too bright, so much so that he has to squint against their glare. When his vision adjusts, he has to wait for his brain to catch up with what his eyes are seeing.

Steve is a mess. His hair is plastered to his forehead, the t-shirt he’s wearing is clinging to his skin for all the wrong reasons, and he’s bleeding. His hands are unwrapped, and they’re bleeding—TJ can see the bright-red spots that cover the knuckles.

TJ’s stomach twists and turns in response. Anger climbs up his throat even as his heart breaks. “Steve.”

Steve doesn’t acknowledge him. There are five battered, discarded heavy bags to one side. God knows how long he’s been at it.

“Steve.”

TJ walks up to him until he’s close enough to see the torn skin and the exposed, raw flesh underneath. Close enough that he notices the middle knuckle in Steve’s left hand is at the wrong angle. He swallows down a wave of nausea.

“Steve, that’s enough.”

Steve doesn’t stop, doesn’t falter.

Jab, cross, hook. Bleed.

Jab, cross, hook. Bleed.

Jab, cross, hook, uppercut. Bleed.

Bleed.

Bleed.

Bleed.

TJ feels like he’s either going to throw up or scream bloody murder in a second. “Steve.”

Jab, jab, cross. Bleed.

“Steve!”

He reaches out and grabs Steve’s shoulder. He realizes he’s made a mistake a split second too late, as Steve whirls around swinging. It’s only by some miracle (and Natasha’s patient training) that TJ manages to duck and avoid having his jaw smashed in by Captain America.

“Whoa!” He comes up with his hands in the air, like Steve is a loaded gun and he’s surrendering. “I’m on your side.”

Steve’s eyes are wide and wild as they finally focus on him. “Jesus, TJ!” He drags a hand across his face, jaw clenched hard enough that TJ can almost hear it creak. “What the hell were you thinking, coming up behind me like that? I could have hurt you!”

TJ wants to shout back. He feels like epinephrine is running alive and electric under his skin, turning him into a live wire. He wants to scream in Steve’s face that this is not his fault, and what the fuck was _Steve_ thinking when he didn’t wrap his hands?

Instead, TJ takes a deep breath and forcefully keeps his own unrest under control. “I called out, twice. You didn’t hear me.”

Steve blinks at him, slowly, and it’s like he’s split in two—trying to bring himself back in the here and now while also remaining stuck wherever it is that he went.

“I’m sorry.” He sounds numb and distant, and it makes TJ feel cold.

“It’s fine,” TJ says. It’s really _not_ fine, but he has more pressing concerns than a near-blow to his face. He takes a step closer, but Steve is already turning away.

TJ leaps forward, effectively putting himself between Steve and the heavy bag. “I think that’s enough for now.”

“Move.”

Something flashes across Steve’s features. It’s dark and dangerous, and TJ doesn’t recognize it. But he’s never been scared of Captain America, and he’s not about to start now, especially when Steve Rogers’ safety is at stake.

He plants himself firmer. “No.”

“Move, TJ.”

“Not happening.”

Steve’s jaw twitches visibly. “Don’t make me move you.”

TJ snorts and crosses his arms over his chest. “I’d like to see you try.” He must look ridiculous, standing there in his pajama pants, barefoot, having a stare-down with a superhero. Still, he refuses to budge. “I said, that’s enough for now.”

Steve juts his chin out. “You don’t get to decide that for me.”

“Oh, but I do.” TJ takes a step forward, matching defiance with defiance. “You may be a super soldier, but I _will_ knock you the fuck down. Nat’s been teaching me.”

That seems to grab Steve’s attention, and he looks a little more like himself as he blinks in utter shock. “She _what_?”

“Yeah. How do you think I dodged you before?” TJ knows for a fact that if it hadn’t been for his basic training with Natasha, he would be on the floor right now.

“I…it doesn’t matter.” The armor snaps back in place. Steve hardens right in front of him, all sharp angles and solid steel in a way he never is around TJ. “Just get out of the way. Please.”

TJ stares at him and makes sure his own iron comes through. They’re going to clash, he knows, but he’s not about to back down. “You’re bleeding.”

To his absolute horror, Steve shrugs. “The serum will take care of it soon enough.”

TJ wants to reach out. He wants to grab Steve by the shoulders and shake him until his teeth rattle and his brain kicks back into function. “The serum is not an excuse for you to self-destruct.”

Steve snorts. “You wanna talk about self-destruction? _You_?”

TJ winces. He doesn’t know this Steve, but he can see the real Steve waving frantically at him from underneath the depths of hurt and fury that swim in the blue of the man’s eyes—begging to be pulled back to the surface. TJ swallows down the bile and resolves not to let him drown.

“Don’t be an asshole,” he says, quietly.

Steve shuts his mouth then, and he watches warily as TJ closes the distance between them and takes his battered fists in his hands.

TJ’s stomach churns again, his heart picking up the pace as he examines the bloodied knuckles. “Come on. Let’s go take care of this.”

“No.”

He looks up, stunned. “No?”

Steve’s features are a mask of stone as he pulls away. “No. I wanna keep going.”

And that’s when TJ has finally had enough, fear and worry and anger all bursting through in a tidal wave he doesn’t know how to stop. “What’s wrong with you? You’re _bleeding_ , Steve.” He puts more emphasis on the word, in case it hasn’t registered the first time.

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine!” He reaches out in desperation and grabs Steve’s left wrist, holding the damaged hand up for the both of them to see. “You’ve dislocated a knuckle. It’s _not_ fine. What the fuck were you thinking—”

Steve wrenches free so fiercely that TJ actually stumbles back a step. “I’m angry, okay? I’m _angry_ and I wanted to let it out, and how I let it out is my own damn business.”

TJ stares at him incredulously. Storms are raging inside him, and it’s all he can do not to be swept away. “You’re angry?”

“Yes.” Steve’s eyes flash. “And if I decide to break a hand while venting that, then that’s on me.”

“No. It’s not ‘on you,’” TJ growls furiously, walking back into Steve’s space. Alarm bells are going off like crazy in his head, telling him that’s not a good idea, but he ignores them. Because this is _Steve_ , and he’s drowning, and TJ is going to pull him out. “It’s on both of us. Now you’re gonna calm down and come upstairs with me, and you’re gonna let me take care of that mess.”

Steve stares him down. There’s something broken in his expression that TJ recognizes all too well—God knows he’s seen that same look in the mirror too many times to count.

“Back off, TJ.” It’s quiet and it’s toneless and it’s _so cold_.

TJ swallows the rock that has lodged in his throat. “You know I can’t do that.”

Steve makes to push past him and TJ makes to grab his arm again in turn, but Steve dodges him with a sharp movement. “I said, back off!”

“Stop it!” TJ is getting more desperate. Harsh. Raw. “You’re angry? Well, tough! Join the fucking club. I’m angry _all the time_.”

That registers. That has Steve hesitate, the real Steve peeking out through the rage in his eyes.

“You don’t get to do this to me because you’re angry, Steve. Fuck that.” TJ walks close again, and he takes Steve’s marred hands in his grasp once more. “Fuck _you_ ,” he says, but there’s no vehemence in it. “We’re gonna fix this, and then we’re gonna talk about what the hell has gotten into you, because this is…” He takes a shaky breath and exhales slowly. “Jesus, Steve. You can’t ask me to watch this and do nothing.”

“You mean like you didn’t make me watch you relapse when we started going out? Like I didn’t have to watch the cravings?”

TJ recoils then. Oh, but this one _hurts_. It lodges into his heart and kicks out at his stomach, so violently that he almost doubles over from the impact. He can feel his eyes widen and the breath catch in his throat.

The real Steve crashes through the surface. His face crumbles, the fury in his blue eyes receding at record speed to be replaced by pure horror. “Oh, God. I’m…I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. TJ, I didn’t mean it—”

He takes one step forward, but he stops abruptly when TJ holds up a hand.

“Give me a minute.”

He can’t stand the idea of being touched right now. His skin vibrates and his thoughts swim around in his skull like scattered lifeboats. TJ grabs a firm hold of them before they can spiral further. He breathes deep—once, twice, three times. Four, five, six.

When he looks up again, Steve is standing a short distance away, looking horrified and way too small for a national hero. “I didn’t mean it.” His voice is a rough whisper, but it still echoes sinisterly in the too-quiet gym.

TJ gulps. It feels like he’s swallowing gravel. “I know,” he says, because he does. It wasn’t his Steve speaking, not in that fraction of a moment that drove a knife into his belly.

He forces himself to get a grip on his runaway feelings. He has read about this. He has done his research. He knows what it’s called and he knows where it comes from, and he knows it’s not Steve—not quite, and not really.

“I know, Steve,” he repeats for good measure, letting the words sink in for both of them.

Steve looks lost. “I’m so sorry.”

TJ sighs. He feels incredibly tired all of a sudden. “I know.”

“I don’t know why I said that.”

“I do.”

Steve stares at him with a confused and yet hopeful expression on his face, as though TJ may hold the key to save him. He looks so damn innocent that TJ’s heart breaks all over again.

“Let’s sit down.”

There are benches lining the walls, and TJ leads the way to one of them. For all of his earlier fight, Steve is compliant as he follows. Their shoulders and knees brush as they sit close together, but TJ doesn’t touch him just yet.

“Sam gave me some reading material,” he begins carefully. He knows he has to choose his words, otherwise Steve will bolt faster than he throws his shield. “On PTSD. Anger can be a big part of it, particularly when you’ve just started to work through it.”

He allows for the information to register.

Steve is frowning in open disapproval. “PTSD can’t be an excuse for me to be a pill to you.”

TJ has to smile. There he is. There’s his Steve, all moral righteousness and black-and-white measurements and 1930’s insults. “No,” he admits. “But it’s a cause. Besides, I used to lash out too sometimes, at the beginning. Remember?”

He’s sure Steve does. TJ himself remembers it as if it was yesterday. He remembers the tautness of his own skin, back when Steve came crashing into his life and he decided to finally get his ass in gear and get clean for real. He remembers the constant knots in his muscles. The ever-present irritability. He remembers lashing out when the cravings got to be too much, when all he wanted to do was self-destruct in peace and Steve wouldn’t let him.

The roles are reversed now, and TJ hates it. He’d take another thirty years of desperate drug use if it meant sparing Steve from all of this.

“I didn’t mean to throw that in your face,” Steve says, voice sandpaper-rough.

TJ does touch him now. He reaches out and covers Steve’s hand with his own, mindful of the raw scrapes. “I know.”

To his surprise, Steve turns his palm upward and interlaces their fingers. “I woke up, earlier,” he begins quietly. “And I was so…I was just so furious, all of a sudden. I felt like I was going to explode. So I came down here. I didn’t mean for it to get this far, I just…once I started, I couldn’t stop.”

TJ tightens his hold around Steve’s hand. This is good. This is progress. As far as he knows, this is the first time Steve has articulated what he has been feeling unprompted.

“Were you dreaming?” he inquires carefully, wary of breaking the spell.

There’s a short pause. “Yeah.”

“Nightmares?”

“No. Not really. I was dreaming about New York. Brooklyn,” Steve clarifies. “How it was before.”

He doesn’t have to elaborate further: they both know what “before” means. Before the serum. Before Europe. Before the ice. _Before_ , when Brooklyn was home.

And that’s when TJ puts the pieces together, and his stomach drops. It’s a good thing he’s sitting down, because he feels as though the floor is slipping out from under him. The damn gala is scheduled for the following night, and they’re due to leave for NYC on a private plane by mid-morning.

“Steve,” he breathes out quietly. “Is New York triggering you?”

Steve is silent for so long that for a moment, TJ thinks he’s not going to answer.

“I guess so…yeah.” He won’t meet his eyes.

TJ kicks himself mentally—over and over again. “I’m sorry.”

“Ain’t your fault.”

Steve still won’t look up, and TJ has never longed for anything more than he longs to see Steve’s eyes now. He tugs gently at the man's hand and leans in to press his lips to the tense line of Steve’s jaw. He smiles when Steve leans into it ever so slightly and finally lifts his head.

TJ catches his gaze and makes sure he holds it steady. “You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to come.”

Steve looks at him solemnly, like they’re talking battle strategies. “Of course I do.”

“No,” TJ says, more strongly. “You don’t. If it’s too much right now, you can sit this one out.”

“I’m not gonna leave you out there alone.”

TJ considers. He considers the differences between this man right here and any other man he’s ever had. This man who is willing to brave demons for him and the men who wouldn’t be seen in public at his side in a million years. His entire being fills up with a feeling far stronger than he thought he would ever get to experience.

 _“I’m so dizzy with you,”_ Steve told him once, all soft smiles and 1930s Brooklyn.

TJ has been “dizzy” with everything that Steve is since day one, and he doesn’t know how to stop falling.

“I won’t be alone,” he says now, spying into Steve’s eyes to catch the signs of what the trigger is really doing to him. “The Avengers will be there, right? I’m gonna be just fine.”

“I’m not staying here, TJ,” Steve says, the steel creeping back into his voice. “I want to be there for you.”

“Steve—”

“Besides, I can’t avoid it forever.”

And that TJ understands, as much as he hates it. Avoidance only puts a band-aid to the wound, but it does nothing to close it. Steve Rogers has done many things in his life, but he has never backed down from a fight. Clearly, this is no different.

“Okay.” He finally relents, because this is Steve’s fight, and he has little say in it. “But we’re gonna have an escape plan in place, in case it gets to be too much.”

For a moment, Steve looks like he’s going to argue. Eventually, he gives a curt nod. “Okay.” He averts his gaze again, bottom lip pulled in tight between his teeth. When he looks back up, his eyes are huge. “I’m sorry. What I said—”

“Wasn’t something you meant or that you’d say if you were thinking straight,” TJ cuts him off. He’s _so_ done with guilt and shame on either of their parts, and he’s going to do everything in his power to spare Steve at least that. He cups the back of Steve’s neck with one hand and tugs him close, bringing their foreheads together. “It’s okay.”

Steve closes his eyes and breathes quietly for a few moments, the calmness of the moment visibly spreading over him like a blanket. When he pulls back, his eyes are clearer.

TJ smiles. _This_ is the Steve he knows and loves so much he often has no idea how to handle it. “Will you let me fix the damage you’ve done to yourself now?” He makes sure there’s no accusation in his tone, but he can’t do anything for the note of fond exasperation that creeps in.

Steve lets out a weak chuckle. “Yeah.”

TJ wants to throttle him. “And then we’re gonna try and get some more sleep.”

“I don’t think I could sleep, TJ,” Steve admits as he stands and begins to collect his gym bag, swinging it over one shoulder.

TJ gives an easy shrug. “Then we’ll pop in a movie and make work on that ginormous list of yours.”

The smile Steve gives him then is worth a thousand sleepless nights.

 

* * *

 

Steve sleeps, in the end. His face is half-buried into TJ’s chest, body pressed in close as they lounge on the couch curled around one another like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Rocky Balboa is training like there’s no tomorrow on the large TV screen, the movie’s audio a low buzzing in the peripheral of TJ’s hearing. His fingers are buried in Steve’s hair, carding mindlessly through soft locks still damp from the shower—his nostrils are filled with the fresh scent of pine and sandalwood and _Steve_.

TJ couldn’t fall back asleep if he tried. His gaze is glued to Steve’s now-bandaged knuckles where Steve’s hand rests upon his abdomen, rising and falling in time with TJ’s breath. The incident in the gym replays over and over in his head. He feels cracked and heartbroken and unprepared—inadequate, the way he’s always been. Inadequate in the face of his demons and, most importantly, inadequate in the face of Steve’s.

A sudden bang from outside startles him out of his gloomy reverie—the sharp clang of a dumpster being knocked over. TJ tenses. Miraculously, Steve doesn’t wake, but he makes an agitated noise at the back of his throat as his battered hand curls into a fist around the fabric of TJ’s t-shirt.

TJ pulls him closer and presses his lips to the top of Steve’s hair. “It’s all good, baby.”

He wants to say that there’s no war, but wouldn’t that be the lie of both of their fucking centuries. There’s always going to be a war for Steve to fight in, whether outside or inward. But Steve settles regardless, and it breaks TJ’s heart in ways that are inexplicable. He lies his cheek on the crown of Steve’s head and closes his eyes, and he lets himself feel the crushing weight of it all for a while.

He’s numb by the time his phone vibrates, some indefinite amount of time later. He stirs and strains to snatch it off the coffee table without disturbing the man in his arms.

**_\- Are you awake?_ **

TJ considers not responding, but there’s something uncertain and a little desperate to his brother's text. Doug has been uncommonly hesitant around him ever since the _Globe_ incident, walking on self-imposed eggshells. It’s all too clear that he feels responsible, and TJ hates it.

He sighs and types back a quick reply.

**_\- Yeah. What’s up?_ **

He stares absently at the _“typing…”_ under Doug’s name on the display. It doesn’t take long.

**_\- I know tomorrow’s gonna be tough. I’m sorry about what happened with the interview. I’m sorry they’re making you do this._ **

Latent anger sparks back to life in TJ’s chest, his whole body tensing with the remnants of a pride the world seems determined to strip him of.

**_\- Nobody’s making me do anything._ **

Doug’s reply comes quicker this time.

**_\- That’s not exactly true…_ **

TJ closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. He doesn’t want to get into it—not ever, and sure as hell not on a messaging app.

**_\- What’s up, Doug?_ **

It takes his brother so long to reply that TJ begins to think maybe Dougie has gotten the hint for once and is going to leave him alone. He’s about to finally, mercifully doze off with Steve as a warm weight against his too-tight chest when the phone buzzes again.

**_\- I want you to know I’m gonna be there for you. We’ll make it flawless, and then you can tell Mom and Dad to fuck off if they ever ask you for anything campaign-related again._ **

And suddenly, just like that, the rage is back. Because TJ knows, and so does (or should) Douglas, that it’s bullshit. Sure, it sounds great on paper: Do this one last thing, and then you can get out. But it never works out that way, does it? There’s always one more thing. One more interview. One more photoshoot. One more appearance.

There’s always one more demand, one more piece of him that they want to take. _Always_.

**_\- Calm down, little bro. I’m good._ **

What else is he supposed to say? As much as the furious sixteen-year-old inside of him is _dying_ for someone to place the blame on, that someone isn’t Dougie.

**_\- Are you?_ **

It’s a testament to just how upset his brother must be that Doug doesn’t give him grief about the “little bro” thing like he usually does.

TJ considers.

**_\- You really wanna help?_ **

The reply is instantaneous.

**_\- Yes._ **

TJ’s fingers are flying on the keyboard. It’s bullshit to expect this campaign not to swallow him whole like politics are the whale and he’s the plankton (and huh, when did the movie end and switch to a David Attenborough-narrated documentary?), but there is one condition that he’s going to make clear as non-negotiable.

**_\- Then make sure you keep the worst of them away from Steve or so help me God, I will embarrass you all so badly, the press will talk about it for years._ **

TJ is resigning himself to the idea that he’s most likely going to sink, but he’ll be damned if he pulls Steve down with him.

**_\- …you really don’t want him involved, do you?_ **

_No_ , goddamnit. TJ really doesn’t. He wants Steve at home in D.C., safe, working through his stuff. He doesn’t want him in New York, nerves exposed and knuckles bleeding, as senators and functionaries fuss over Captain America.

**_\- No, Douglas. I don’t._ **

It’s radio silence for quite a few minutes, long enough that TJ starts to feel guilty. He can picture his brother sitting up in bed, the display of his phone the only light in the room as his wife sleeps next to him, wrestling with responsibilities that he shouldn’t burden himself with.

**_\- I’m sorry._ **

TJ sighs. Doug has no call apologizing to him. He’s so tired of weights attempting to crush the people he loves. He’s just _so tired_.

**_\- Good night, Dougie._ **

The nickname has the desired effect, softening the whole tone of the conversation. But for once, amazingly, Doug also takes the hint.

**_\- ‘Night, TJ. I’ll see you tomorrow._ **

It’s meant to be reassuring, he knows, but to TJ, it just sounds ominous.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1930s lingo: 
> 
> \- Dizzy with = To be very much in love with someone


End file.
